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Comment by loganu | Hacker News Reader

Thinking about your last sentence: Elon has been tweeting about Tesla's summon feature - tap your phone and your car will come to you, across the street or across the country. If a car can drive LA to NY legally, without a driver, there should be a way for it to carry a drunk passenger. Whether that means enabling "drunk mode" so you can't grab the steering wheel, or that you have to sit in the back seat, there's surely room for a compromise between the automakers and lawmakers. Technology like this will save lives.

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There is plenty of tech out there that can "save lives" but the market has steadfastly refused. How about "No seatbelt, no car move". They tried, but given how many americans refuse to wear seatbelts it has never made it into a product. An enforced 'Drunk mode', presumably with some sort of breathalizer interlock, would be far more disenfranchising and I have to believe would also be rejected.

I was thinking more of something like "I'm drunk, so I'm going to voluntarily give my car control to take me home." Basically turning it into a driverless taxi. "No seatbelt, no car move" is restricting in that it's always enabled. Something like what I've dubbed "drunk mode" or "taxi mode" gives you more options.

So a drunk mode that need the drunk to acknowledge that he/she is drunk and voluntarily initiate drunk mode? I don't think drunks are the best judges of whether they are drunk, or their driving ability. The law agrees. For drunk mode to be safe, to properly make a dent in the drunk driving problem, it has to actually prevent them from taking the wheel even when they want to, especially when they want to. Otherwise all the confident drunks, the alcoholics, wil keep taking to the road.

This is important because so many of the "human factor" mistakes cited by autodrive proponents actually begin with alcohol/drug use. If the human really cannot be trusted, the car has to take away his authority.

> How about "No seatbelt, no car move".

I like the concept but what if the sensor fails? Suddenly you're stuck who knows where...

I believe Chevrolet has a "teenage driver mode" which allows you to disable the radio, AC, and for it to bug you if you drive without a seat belt. I like that concept far more since it doesn't leave you stranded because the seat belt failed to be detected. It also allows you to set a maximum speed, a maximum radio volume, and for parents to get a report later if they wish.

I never drive without a seat belt. I just don't want to add more points of failure to a car than it absolutely needs.

Wait for the day that your google car won't move because it cannot connect to the server. Or because the lidar lens is dirty. Or a tire pressure sensor is incorrectly indicating a flat. Or (and I really hope this does happen) the engine light has been on for a week. Autodrives will no doubt have many reasons not to move. Seatbelt mandates will seem trivial in comparison.

Because regular cars never break down? I think with self-driving cars it would be that much easier for a remote health check to figure out something is wrong with your car and send you a loaner, analogous to the way tesla lends people cars when anything goes wrong with theirs.

An autodrive call will break down as much as a regular car AND then will brake down more because of the various systems over and above that a regular car does not rely upon.

When a regular car brakes down there is normally something you can do. The vehicle is still movable. An autodrive car with a blown lidar unit is probably bricked.

> An autodrive call will break down as much as a regular car AND then will brake down more because of the various systems over and above that a regular car does not rely upon.

I'm sure glad you have the data to back this up.

> When a regular car brakes down there is normally something you can do. The vehicle is still movable. An autodrive car with a blown lidar unit is probably bricked.

You can still put it on the back of a truck or tow it, the same way you would for a car which has actually broken down. You can do the same for the theoretically broken replacement car.

(1) Are you kidding me? This is basic logic. Adding additional failure points to a system, with everything else being the same, creates higher failure rates.

(2) If you need a truck to move it, I call that bricked. Normal cars, when they loose various systems, are still mobile. A normal car can still be rolled even without any electrical system working. Steering and brakes can be are completely controllable via muscles alone, even on electric cars. An autodrive car could be a total unknown. Some don't even have a manual (non-electic) steering wheel.

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