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Comment by paul7986 | Hacker News Reader

I live outside of Pennsylvania Dutch country and two weeks ago driving in that area I was shocked to see many horse and buggy drivers distracted by their iPhones.

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"The Amish don’t always reject a technology, but they have very specific rules about how it is to be used." Maybe they determined a way to use their iphones without them being harmful? I.e. using specific apps or only in certain circumstances.

I feel like depends on whether or not they are using their iPhone while operating their horse and buggy.

To be fair, a horse and buggy is somewhat self-driving. The horse knows how to walk and stop and when to make a noise if something goes awry.

Can the horse and buggy automatically move out of the way if someone else is about to hit it?

Yes. It is a horse. Horses are completely capable of independent movement.

Yes but you shouldn't rely on it and should always be paying attention. We're hoping that the next version of horse should be fully autonomous.

Within the limitations of the horse's reaction time and maneuverability with an attached buggy, yes.

And those limitations are severe, given the speed limits of many rural roads. Even at 35 MPH, a car is 3x as fast as a horse and buggy.

The other key is that each community decides for themselves what is permitted and not permitted. Some Amish are permitted to drive cars, but only if the car is black, but this is community specific. Source - my brother-in-laws family left the Amish when he was young, so he got to see both worlds.

Back in the 80s, I always wondered if a "black cars only" community would find a Buick Grand National, with its turbo-charged V6, acceptable:

https://wikicars.org/en/Buick_Grand_National

Wow, that's a beautiful car.

Sounds like they have better self driving tech.

Self-driving horse.

Do they have turn signals in their buggy? or they just use their hands to signal? I would suppose the horse knows the road, is in "auto" mode. Obviously i have no experience with horses at all.

They have turn signals, along with flashing hazard lights. And they’re quite necessary, since they’re often traveling at less than a quarter of the speed of the traffic around them.

Without a turn signal, car drivers would try to pass a buggy that has moved into the middle of the lane in order to make a left turn.

In a don't-text-while-driving context it might be more suitable to compare buggy drivers to car passengers. Horses are alive and will try to avoid crashing violently.

So, unlike Tesla, the Amish have a working auto-drive system.

There's a technological trade off to consider. For example, the Tesla doesn't literally smell like shit.

I trust a horse driven vehicle over any modern day self driving car!!!

They also make use of solar panels on their farms. They just don't use public power.

I don't know a lot about the Amish, but my understanding is that it's less about the technology itself and more about its effects (as is the focus of this article) and also the dependencies it creates.

The Amish are OK with using electricity as long as they can generate it themselves. They don't want to be dependent on a utility to provide it.

Yes, it's common for Amish carpenters to use lot's of modern power tools in the course of their work, but will often remove the electric motor and replace it with a belt drive that is powered by a water wheel or similar.

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