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Comment by sipior | Hacker News Reader

Amazement, and a wistful longing for a simple freedom enjoyed in the distant, halcyon past. Before nervous, frightened people in denial of their own conspicuous mortality decided to remove yet another source of fun and excitement because of the irresponsible actions of a few.

I think the leading cause of death in "a few decades" will be profound boredom.

(Also, whilst a computer may indeed be well-suited to drive my car as a matter of principle, there is still the small matter of it being programmed by humans...)

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Deadly car accidents aren't the actions of "a few". Anyone can cause one through inattentive driving, tiredness, mobile phone usage, and of course simple lack of experience.

The other tragic thing about car accidents is that your mistakes can kill not only yourself, but also many other people. You might argue (though I'd disagree) that someone who's been driving for 10 hours straight deserves to die in an accident, but you certainly can't argue that the family of 5 that he crashed into head-on deserved it too.

To suggest these countless people need to die to satisfy your need for thrills is somewhat like suggesting that vaccines are boring because they take away the excitement of not knowing which of your children will live to an adult age.

The car has certainly done far far far more good than bad. That's why we put up with the downside (a few deaths a day).

The issue is that there's a small minority of bad drivers who cause accidents. Removing everyones freedom to drive because of those few isn't very fair, and would result in a boring 'locked down' society.

Removing everyones freedom to drive because of those few isn't very fair, and would result in a boring 'locked down' society.

You can't expect a 'freedom' to exist in perpetuity for something that can easily result in the deaths of others by the actions of one person.

I'd put it in the same category as things like not allowing people to smoke in workplaces, public buildings, etc, or allowing people to shoot firearms in the backyards of their suburban homes.

I just don't see there being a 'freedom to manually control tons of metal for the purposes of transportation' trumping the immense amount of benefits to safety, among others.

We have umpteen checks to ensure drivers are as safe as they can be. Deaths in the US from driving have come down from around 120 a day in 2000 to around 90 a day now.

In the UK, it's about 8 deaths a day from driving. The road network is now eight times safer per mile travelled than it was in 1966.

Just for comparison, around 400+ people die each day in the UK from cancer.

Instead of wasting a ton of money making robotic driverless cars because it sounds good, I'd invest that money straight into cancer research.

Why waste a ton of money on cancer research that has a good chance of saving no lives, when you can invest money into driverless vehicles that are guaranteed to save lives?

Driverless vehicles won't prevent all deaths on the road. Pedestrians and cyclists account for quite a few.

Pedestrians and cyclists are killed by... drivers.

Ok, maybe some cyclists die of collisions with other cyclists, but I'd wager they're a tiny minority.

Riight.. And your uber-safe automatic car is able to react if I, the stupid pedestrian (or worse, because I'm faster, biker) cross a road without looking.

No matter how fast you react, if you go at reasonable speeds and I'm the idiot, you're going to hit me (kill is optional). I think that's what your parent poster was trying to say (because that way it is a sensible argument). Whatever you implement in vehicle safety: If I'm able to throw myself in front of the thing in the last moment, hopefully because I'm a moron and not intentionally, then no technology on earth can avoid the accident.

Unless... You want to add mandatory robot bikes and robot shoes...

I'd argue that a self-driving car can take actions that a human drivers would not be capable of performing...

First of all, it will have much quicker reactions - and in accidents, those extra milliseconds do save lives. Secondly, it can take calm reactions where a human would panic. For example, if a parson started stumbling around drunkenly on a highway, with human drivers zooming past at 70mph a deadly accident is guaranteed. With self-driven cars, it's not that unreasonable to assume that they will be able to spot the person some distance away and change lane to shift around him or her. It might cause a slow-down in traffic around that area, but there's a good chance the whole incident can happen without accidents.

(Shrug) If a computer can drive a car, it can also steer a bicycle or a Segway-like pedestrian transportation appliance.

The same ludicrous reasoning that will eventually force us into computer-driven cars will do the same for other forms of transportation, rest assured.

Deaths in the US from driving have come down from around 120 a day in 2000 to around 90 a day now.

In other words, one 9/11 every month. I refuse to believe that's as safe as possible.

I'd invest that money straight into cancer research.

Well, you'd have to look at the marginal benefits. Cancer research already gets lots of funding; it's unlikely that a relatively small percentage increase would result in drastic improvements. If we're going down that road, I'd rather invest in SENS and try to knock out all age-related diseases in one shot.

I'm a bit surprised at the opposition to this. I'm much more libertarian than average here, but I recognize that driving is by far the most dangerous thing I do on an average day. If automated cars can mostly eliminate that danger, I'd have no problem requiring them on public roads (or strongly encouraging them via insurance premiums). Plus, saving lives is only one of the major benefits. Look at rush hour traffic: ideally, automated vehicles would eliminate traffic jams, and even if not they would still allow commuters to do something productive or entertaining instead of slowly inching forward.

You have that one the wrong way around - it shows that 9/11 is relatively insignificant, not that driving can be drastically improved.

You can't expect a 'freedom' to exist in perpetuity for something that can easily result in the deaths of others by the actions of one person.

Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway?

Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway?

This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm.

That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.

>This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm.

>That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.

Hyperbole? Driving is dangerous, on that we are agreed, but the activity in your example is far, far, far more dangerous. There is obviously some standard of danger at which we no longer ban people from doing things: you aren't allowed to shoot at people, but you are allowed to carry a gun in the first place, and even regardless of your own intention this admits the possibility that someone insane might steal your gun and shoot innocent people.

So I don't think that valuing the freedom to control your own vehicle can be immediately dismissed as absurd. The apparent danger of driving is exaggerated by the astounding safety of modern life: at no point before 1900 did any human enjoy anything remotely approaching a modern standard of safety. In industrialized countries, the vehicle fatality rate is commensurate with or below the suicide rate. The number of people who enjoy the freedom of driving is massive, essentially the entire adult population of those countries, and so this common experience perhaps should not be ignored.

Some of -- but not all of -- the value in freedom is reflected in the potential for damage in non-freedom. If some external agent controls the mobility of the population, the potential for abuse is massive.

And what about the pollution and CO2 emissions from your car? Does "freedom" allow you to ignore the deleterious effects they'll have on other people?

Absolutely not. The corollary to freedom, IMO, is responsibility for your actions.

>is somewhat like suggesting that vaccines are boring because they take away the excitement of not knowing which of your children will live to an adult age.

I realize you use the word "somewhat", but I still stand by sipior. Autos are, for many, a necessary mode of transportation that have the unfortunate potential to be abused or misused. Knives can be used to prepare food or kill/maim others, as well. I hope no one thinks we should build robots to do all of our cooking for us on the chance we might slice a finger.

Slicing a finger and losing an entire family in a horrible car crash are hardly comparable. Your comparison is absurd.

If 80 people died every day (source: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx ) in the US from chopping up their vegetables, sometimes entire families slaughtered by a wayward broccoli stem, building robots to do our vegetable-chopping for us should definitely be a high priority.

Bear in mind I'm not advocating the removal of cars - merely that great efforts should be made to introduce self-driving cars over the next generation or two.

>Your comparison is absurd.

A strange complaint, coming from someone who not twenty minutes ago compared mandatory automated cars to vaccination, the former being a significant infringement on freedom for an undetermined safety gain and the latter being the most successful medical program in the history of humanity.

>Bear in mind I'm not advocating the removal of cars - merely that great efforts should be made to introduce self-driving cars over the next generation or two.

Okay, and that's fair, but this thread started with someone saying automated cars should be mandatory, so surely you'll understand if we choose to argue against that point?

I support computers being used to improve highway safety. I am not yet ready to conclude that the best way to go about this is to mandate self-driving cars for everyone, no exceptions.

Perhaps the mandate should be for those found guilty of reckless driving, aggressive driving, DUIs, vehicular homicide, etc. You get the privilege of driving until you are seen unfit to drive.

People found ways to not be bored in the millions of years before the invention of the automobile. The thrill of riding a horse. The thrill of running when you're fit.

Personally, I find driving to be the definition of boring. The distant, halcyon past is the brief decades (out of the entirety of human history) where we were able to live under the illusion that we could build a road system that would handle the burgeoning amount of traffic without gridlock.

I'll take you at your word regarding your examples of "thrills", although I would note that the horse is probably less impressed :-)

I'm not sure about your last point. Enormous strides have been made in designing road networks that are far more tolerant of heavy loads. But gridlock is also in some sense a social problem, and so a purely technological or algorithmic solution is perhaps unrealistic.

If you want to have fun, go drive on a racing track. Don’t endanger commuters who have no choice but to drive.

Having fun whilst driving is not actually incompatible with road safety, and I'm not entirely sure why you seem to be suggesting that it is. The cause of this horrible accident certainly wasn't an excess of (driving) enjoyment.

Humans suck at driving. As soon as we have the technology we should let machines do it. I’m willing to bet that there will be ample opportunities for those who are willing to take the risk to drive without endangering others.

He's not suggesting that having fun while driving is incompatible with road safety. He's suggesting that a world of mandatory robot drivers on public roads doesn't preclude having fun while driving.

Before nervous, frightened people in denial of their own conspicuous mortality decided to remove yet another source of fun and excitement because of the irresponsible actions of a few.

In general, driving is not a source of fun and excitement. In fact, commute times are strongly and negatively associated with self-reported happiness.

People drive for reasons other than commuting, of course. I happen to like driving (especially since I learned to drive a manual). I'm sorry if you don't.

Your last point is certainly true. I used to commute to work via a combination of bike and train; getting a car cut my commute in half, and I am decidedly happier for it.

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