[Cro_on]

I find it a little concerning that the car is allowed to drive in autopilot with the seats reclined. I thought there were warnings for taking your hands off the steering wheel? I suppose they can be ignored. But full recline is a bit OTT.

[AnthonyMouse]

A car is not your mother. It has no obligation to prevent you from speeding or driving the wrong way down a one way street or otherwise being an idiot. And it shouldn't try, because sometimes the car has an inaccurate map or doesn't know that something unusual is happening or the sensor is broken etc.

[c22]

When I'm driving I get to decide how loud the radio is or whether all the windows are down, not my passengers. If the car is doing the driving I have no problem with the car stipulating its own requirements to ensure a safe trip.

[lmilcin]

The whole point is that the car is NOT doing the driving the same way cruise control is not doing the driving either. It is not fully, self driving car, yet. It can automate some portion of the driving task, just as cruise control can, but the limits of operation, as stated by the producer, do not allow it to control the car unattended.

[AnthonyMouse]

No. The car isn't a person. It has no awareness of external context. You can't change its mind using evidence or reasoning. The person in the vehicle should always be able to override the car.

[bb88]

> A car is not your mother.

Rhetoric like this works until it won't anymore. And that rhetoric breaks when innocent bystanders start getting killed in numbers. Line up enough grieving families in front of congress and congress will act, and then the new rhetoric will be "The car should be your mother."

[AnthonyMouse]

> Rhetoric like this works until it won't anymore.

Let it continue to work forever then.

> And that rhetoric breaks when innocent bystanders start getting killed in numbers. Line up enough grieving families in front of congress and congress will act, and then the new rhetoric will be "The car should be your mother."

Do I get to line up mine? Cars doing what idiots tell them to is remedied by punishing those idiots. Cars not doing what people need them to results in fatalities.

Bob is a big dude. He weighs 400 pounds and can only fit in the car by putting the seat all the way back. There are a million Bobs and you just prohibited any of them from ever using driver assist, which would have improved safety and saved lives.

Your car won't let you drive more than 10MPH over the speed limit. But then it thinks you're on a service road with a 30MPH speed limit when you're really on the highway with a 70MPH speed limit, forces you to decelerate to a speed 30MPH slower than the traffic flow, and you get rear-ended and cause a twelve car pile up with nine fatalities.

You're on a family vacation driving through a deserted area in the middle of nowhere and stop to stretch your legs. When you get back in the car, some sensor has failed and the vehicle's computer won't let you put the vehicle back into motion again, but there is no wireless coverage or anyone else around, so you and your family die in the wilderness.

You need to drive your car the wrong way down a one way street because you need to get to a hospital and the other road is blocked, or you're currently impeding a fire truck answering an emergency call, or you need to get away from a forest fire. The computer refuses.

"I can't let you do that, Dave." -> People die.

[bb88]

While you make a bunch of good points about the unintended consequences of regulations, it's clear to me that cars work as is without an auto-pilot -- and have since the original Model T.

That said, Ralph Nader's "Unsafe At Any Speed" is a great example of why regulation of automobiles is needed. There's also a reason why cars have safety glass on the windshield.

I'd like to see your entire post again, but related only to self-driving cars.

[threatofrain]

Then IMO it doesn't seem too invasive to have a breathalyzer test attached to all vehicles, which will certainly save a lot of lives. The data can be all local and regularly wiped to mitigate the privacy concern.

Are the numbers behind alcohol-related vehicular injuries and deaths not high enough to be a political or public priority?

[bb88]

Looks like there's plenty of laws and support surrounding drunk driving.

https://www.madd.org/laws/

[manicdee]

There are more accidental deaths from firearms than Teslas. Clearly we need better regulation of firearm handling and ownership.

[belltaco]

If so,why aren't cars locked to the maximum speed in a country?

[maxerickson]

I mean, there's interlocks between the shift mechanism and brakes, at least in part because it's safer.

Which there's two things to separate out; the lack of a feature on a vehicle doesn't particularly free the driver from responsibility for things they do, and then there's what sort of idiotic vehicles we are willing as a society to share the road with.

"A car is not your mother" doesn't really answer the second part.

[lmilcin]

Very much appreciated.

People need to understand THEY are responsible for what they are doing, not the companies for not preventing them doing stupid things.

"A car is not your mother"

I am definitely going to use it:)