Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

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People conceptualize cars as an extension of themselves, their own private pod that they control entirely, but as automation technology improves I think they're going to have to start thinking of it more like boarding a train or an airplane. Increasingly, we'll have tech to make decisions for drivers that are much better than the decisions they make for themselves (even before we get to full automation). This includes stuff like breaking for obstacles, but it might also include things like speed governors or GPS-enabled traffic-law enforcement.

I don't see any way around it. Once you have the tech to prevent an automobile from exceeding the speed limit in a school zone it's obscene to manufacture cars that respond only to the input of the driver's foot on the accelerator, with no other considerations. At some point, "I have decided to drive 130 mph down a residential street, because that's what I've decided to do in this exact moment and I have a right to be in control of my own car" just isn't good enough. You have all these other inputs and, what, you're just going to ignore them?

Oh God yes. Computers don't get impatient, don't let their temper spiral out of control, don't "bravely" try to get to work on 3 hours of sleep, don't display crab-bucket jerk moves, etc. Cars bring out the worst in people and it comes with life altering consequences for innocent people.

Cars are not freedom on four wheels, it's simply one method, among many, for you go to work and buy groceries.

Not true. Maybe you are a foreigner? It is worth explaining how we see cars. Ever since especially 40s and later they represent the ability for any person to go wherever desired without conforming to somebody else's schedule. We see them as "freedom on four wheels" and will work to keep them that way even if you think they shouldn't be.

And maybe I can trace my family back to the 1600's? Thanks for your "explanation". I know exactly how people see cars. My great-grandfather, a Boston driver if there ever was, raged against stop lights when they were introduced: "Ain't no machine going to tell me when to stop and go!" People love their "shortcuts" that go down neighborhood streets at 20 over and which aren't actually any faster.

That "freedom" comes at the cost of people's homes that made way for highways, fortunes spent on a car that became necessary to hold a job, and lives because "oh it was just an _accident_". It seems more like slavery to me.

> And maybe I can trace my family back to the 1600's?

This is totally off topic, but I recently came across a bunch of information about my family tree that totally changed my perception of this. By the time you get back this far you're talking about literally tens of thousands of living ancestors. I had always heard my family came here at the end of the 19th century, but it turns out some of them were already here in the 17th, because, again, this far back you're talking maybe 20,000 people. It's not the, like, 8-10 ancestors whose names you know from 1900.

All it takes is for one of those thousands to have set up here and at some point for one of their descendants to have procreated with somebody in your ancestral line, who maybe came here much later for it to be true that your ancestry here technically goes back to whenever they first got here.

Exponential growth surprises, yet again.

We can make a car so that it knows it's raining, it can tell the tires are getting poor traction, it knows its location, it knows it's in a school zone, it knows the prevailing speed limit, it has cameras and can see there are children crossing the street ahead, internal cameras sense that the driver isn't paying attention, the stereo is loud, and yet -- the car should ignore every one of those inputs, because if the driver presses their foot on the accelerator pedal, then that means it should increase its speed, without any other consideration, because of "freedom?"

It's absurd.

Why would you manufacture a means of conveyance that behaves that way? You certainly wouldn't ever allow one on a public street, not when you have all the tech I described above. That's a bad product. I mean, it might describe an ATV or something -- a vehicle you use for fun off of public thoroughfares. But it's not a serious vehicle that meets the standards for operating on public rights of way.

Please do not mock freedom. The freedom to push on the accelerator pedal even when The Computer thinks I should not means I can get me and my kid out of a dangerous situation the computer doesn't know about. Freedom is control over your own body, life, and property. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with this control. Sorry if I don't want to out source control over my person to a computer or parts of society with whom I share no values.

This is the "extension of yourself" part I opened with. You're still talking about the car likes it's an extension of youself. It isn't. It's just a tool. And it doesn't limit your freedom in any way that we require this particular tool to meet certain operational standards in order to be allowed on a public road. I reject the notion that there's even a freedom component here at all.

We already regulate practically every aspect of driving. You're just used to those things, so they seem invisible.

This sounds a lot like gun control. In likelyhood you are going to hurt yourself more than prevent harm from happening... but banning guns does mean that on the off chance a gang of bank robbers storms into your house your are powerless.

I believe there was a car in the 80's that would not start the ignition if the driver's seatbelt wasn't on. One day a women was trying to flee from an attempted rapist and was too panicked to buckle in... and well he got to her, and she sued.

The tradeoffs between general benefits and particular harms have lots of nuance and really plug into deep personal values.

The right to self-defense and the right to operate any kind of vehicle you desire on a public right of way don't actually sound similar to me at all.

I won't want to buy a car that makes sub optimal decisions for me. I want emergency breaks and blind spot warnings, I want cruise control and an awesome radio, but I won't buy a car I don't control, unless I can get one that is driverless and where I can still set it to aggressive mode, and select the route.

Can you buy a car without seatbelts? It doesn't really matter if you think a car with seatbelts is suboptimal for any reason. They don't sell cars without seatbelts.

Something similar is eventually going to happen with a bunch of this other stuff.

The problem is that it is federal overreach. I'm fine with doing it on a state by state basis, but this has no business being in the purview of the federal govt.

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