| > Driving is a social construct. It is the application of physics while navigating a social world. Interesting way of looking at it. In the countries where people tend to drive at high speed on the wrong side of the road, I'm inclined to agree with you. In countries where people follow the rules of the road, I think it's the opposite. There, it's primates who evolved to follow and react to a complex social and physical environment being forced to follow a simple and rather tedious set of rules, which require constant vigilant attention. This is something we humans are not good at - we're designed for short bursts of attention in situations where rules need to be interpreted intuitively, not driving for three hours while strictly following the rules of the road. > observing social constructs (that differ regionally) Well, the social constructs around driving also different temporally and are changing all the time. Self driving, even partially implemented, is sure to have profound effects on these cultures all over the world. >perceives a tsunami coming from ahead of it. In extreme cases like tsunami, floods, or fires, there are solutions. In the short (and probably medium) term the cars will still have human controls, so the human can instantly take over. In the long term, well maybe there can be a "panic button" that allows a human to shout voice controls. Either way, it's just another solvable technical issue, and probably much easier than many other issues that need to be solved. BTW it's not like researchers haven't considered to these things https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1122534_self-driving-c... |