The things that frustrate me most during driving are equally present when running on a trail, waiting for a subway train or observing cyclists, for instance. They are:
1. Not knowing where the heck you are and what you are doing. Many people seem utterly unaware of themselves and the effect that their actions have on others.
2. Refusing to either speed up or move out of the way (doesn’t really matter which of those you do but if you refuse to do both then you will become a huge obstacle, whether it’s a sidewalk or a road).
3. Believing you are better at multitasking than you really are.
If you’re blocking a sidewalk, you’re exhibiting poor “driving” in a walking scenario. If you’re blocking the entrance to the doors, you’re exhibiting poor “driving” in a train station. If you’re prioritizing your texting and interfering with me, you’re exhibiting poor “driving” in just about any situation (driving or walking or social for that matter).
Automation is not required to fix the biggest frustrations with driving: rather, human beings need to start paying a lot more attention EVERYWHERE in life and being a lot more reasonable to one another.
It's not much different from that when a human is driving. The conditions do dictate some limits to how the driver can wander about (you can only mostly go straight on a highway) but everyone will stop to think something at times and maybe happens to slow down or slowly steer left/right until they refocus on driving again.
However, on the road, this behaviour is very irritating for those who are in their from-A-to-B mode because, unlike in a busy railway station where they can just snake through the crowd, with the worst case of gently bumping into bypassers while at that, they can not easily go around the slower drivers in busy traffic. Driving is basically monotonic robot work, or should be. It's not a natural way of being that lends to distracted behaviour as walking about does.
Now, "unifying theories" tend to be rather simplistic, and the parent did exactly publish a replicable study, but you didn't really rebut the thrust of the argument. Instead, you claimed the parent is the problem for expressing the argument in the first place. Even if the behaviors are not comparable in final effect (and I agree with you, they aren't), they are comparable in cause. On the face of it, there do appear to be strong, outward similarities in the frustrating obliviousness (or willful apathy) of people who inconvenience others while walking and people who inconvenience others while driving. One might result in death and the other might not, but that's really just a matter of nuance. The behaviors are fully comparable, it just happens that one takes place in an environment which is fundamentally more lethal.
As an aside, I find my reactions are comparable as well. One of the most bloody frustrating things I frequently encounter is someone who suddenly stops their shopping cart in such a way that it blocks traffic, then walks away from it to roam for produce.
That could, of course, be an incorrect interpretation of what was being said; I certainly agree that the immediate emotional response tends to more negatively weight things that are annoying and slowing me down more than things that are actually dangerous, which is part of why I think it's so important to say something about this sort of thing, and to make sure you change that weight.
Guns get a lot of press and a lot of emotion; really, a lot of emotion that I think would be better focused against cars. If there's not a gun in your house, you are dramatically more likely to be killed in an auto accident than by a gun. (or, if you want to put it another way, as an American, if you remove suicides, you are a lot more likely to be killed by a car than by a gun.)
Having traveled over the world , I tend to chalk most human behavior up to cultural or personal quirks these days. If an issue is cultural in nature, the culture can be changed.
My point here isn't to start an argument (clearly the definition of "sucking at driving" is relative), but just pointing out that I'm fascinated that our roads work as well as they do, all things considered.
Not only do they suck at driving, but they're also reckless. You'll find them doing all sorts of crazy things while driving:
- Search for something in the glove box.
- Do their make up.
- Read novels.
- Play Pokemon Go.
I'm not making up any of the above. The last one has even made the headlines in Japan recently because of 3 deadly accidents caused by drivers playing Pokemon Go, and because of video of a tourist bus driver playing Pokemon Go on the job.
Ballistics is so complicated and yet, our brains and and muscles do it all naturally.
On the other hand, I'm sure a properly configured and programmed robot will throw the paper ball into the bin more reliably than me.
I guess a million deaths is also an acceptable number a year for you?
This is part of the problem. In some countries, they aim for 0 fatalities, but in most we accept the number of deaths we have now.
On the contrary it seems humans are very good at adjusting to varied and unpredictable traffic and road conditions without issue everyday.
I think ai proponents have got into the bad habit of underplaying the skills, instincts and adjustments involved or exaggerrating accidents out of context of total traffic. There is no data on how AI cars would do at this volume and level of varied conditions so the argument is dishonest.
An ai vehicle operating in constrained road and traffic conditions is a completely different propositon to the traffic patterns negotiated by human drivers everyday.