[rhacker]

I wonder if all this AI to build self driving cars should have gone into AI that simply saves lives a lot more easily: - detect if the driver is insane, drunk, swerving (tired?), stolen. - detect baby in the backseat parked, and temp rising?

If all the AI did was decide you're unfit to drive, that it take over for a few minutes to get to the next stop and pull over and call the cops on you, we might save more lives by that alone.

[TulliusCicero]

Automatic crash avoidance is already a thing that's steadily rolling out to more cars, and improving over time.

For stopping people from driving, you'd have to solve the social issues there first somehow. "Our car stops you from driving if it thinks you're incompetent" isn't something that sells more cars. Maybe the government could mandate it, and that's the government's responsibility.

[grandmczeb]

> "Our car stops you from driving if it thinks you're incompetent" isn't something that sells more cars.

I could see something like that as part of a “supervised driver” safety feature. Like maybe you enable it when your kids use the car or if you rent the car out to strangers.

[jennyyang]

The AI that you talk about should be used in traffic lights. They should affix cameras to every single traffic light and have AI figure out the traffic flows. Then they can make traffic much more efficient throughout an entire city. It should be able to track a car through its entire journey through license plate recognition, and then adjust traffic throughout the entire city so that it's the most efficient for the amount of traffic.

[thebean11]

So basically a super high tech car breathalyzer that uses some black box algorithm to decide if I'm drunk and call the police on me? The self driving car seems a little bit cooler.

Why not just install the existing breathalyzers in every car right now?