Posted by demonsthenes 6 hours ago
I feel like given the danger these vehicles represent that their location should be published publicly so that humans can avoid the highway when they are near and possibly plan alternative routes.
Also, I believe that part of the "plan" is to eventually once the technology hits it limit of effectiveness (cant get any better but is still deadly), flood the highways with enough of them and autonomous cars to scare humans off the roads. There will be a tipping point where humans wont feel safe driving on the roads with these vehicles in large enough numbers (because they arent).
At that point we will be paying taxes for robot highways, and to fund liability protections for tech companies.
In short, "autonomous cars scare humans off the roads" (or even "most major roads are legally for autonomous cars only, private cars are legally banned on them") is something that a substantial number of people are openly and actively hoping for, because they expect it will save about 40,000 lives a year in the US (and more worldwide).
I personally have qualms about this because I don't like the idea that people will be dependent on autonomous cars - likely controlled by some far-away authority - to get around. On the other hand, 40,000 American road deaths per year, that's a lot of preventable death.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/semi-truck-driver-dead...
Humans are such terrible drivers. Most of them don't want to drive. They want to get a private chamber to wheel them around while they look at their phones.
I'm continually shocked that people criticize autonomous vehicles along these lines... like where do you live in the US that gives you such a high opinion of human drivers? Daily dipshit human driving behaviors and a frequent cadence of bad accidents or fatalities seems the norm across major metro areas.
If more robots can drive we can actually have a hard test to pass for driving. Right now basically anyone can drive because it is too expensive to tolerate it being any different given the extent with which transportation and the economy in America is built around cars. The only people who will manually drive are people that really want to. Which is how it should be. You shouldn't be operating a vehicle if all you really want is just to appear x miles away while being able to dick around on your phone or fall asleep or whatever is causing all the lazy driving behaviors we all see around us everyday.
Why over-index on a handful of autonomous driving related fatalities? How many humans kill other humans in cars? Do we ban all cars? Why do you think robot cars will necessarily always be worse drivers than human ones?