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Comment by trinsic2 | Hacker News Reader

Privacy concerns aside regarding how this information in a negative way. I want my alertness to be monitored. One of the smart cars I was driving recently poped up a recommendation on the console that I should pull over and take a short break, or something to that effect. I realized that I was tired and groggy and I thought that was a good idea. So I pulled over and rested for about 20mins then got back on the road and I was more alert. I think these prompts are great because sometimes I don't realize that my lack of alertness can be dangerous. Having that reminder is a great plus in my experience.

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The Rav4 has an aggressive driving indicator too I believe. One day my wife was out and we had an argument over the phone (my fault, of course...) She drove back in an emotional state of mind snd the car suggested her to pull over.

I don't see why driver monitoring data needs to go to the cloud. If the car senses swerving and large fluctuation in acceleration then the driver should take a rest.

The pull of the lane assist alone helps me realize when I'm not paying enough attention to the road.

See, this gets to me. Do you have a license to operate a motor vehicle? That little card is supposed to indicate that you are capable of safely operating a motor vehicle. If you cannot do that; you should not have that little card. You shouldn't be relying on the car to help you. It's not your fault though. The government deemed you responsible enough to operate a vehicle and that was probably a mistake. They do it to thousands of people. Probably over half of those little cards were issued to people who shouldn't have them.

I personally think we should make different classes of drivers. Drivers licenses for people like you who can only operate vehicles under 3,000lbs with max driving assists and at most 200 horsepower. And another class of unrestricted responsible drivers for people who actually want to get where they are going in a safe, cost efficient, and time efficient manner. People who respect that they are operating a piece of heavy machinery at great speed in close proximity to other human beings with places they're trying to go, and who take that responsibility seriously.

I think the solution should be to be more self-aware, not to jam highly invasive technology into vehicles. I don't want my car to have any sense of my "alertness" at all, ever, I don't care if it keeps that data local, it should never ever be recording/monitoring it in the first place.

The problem with losing alertness is that you also lose your ability to monitor alertness.

Yeah, and we can rip out all those pointless and expensive seatbelts and crumple zones and airbags and replace them with just a bit more unerringness.

Yes we should.

And then we can replace ambulances with hurses and arm the drivers. Think of the savings!

when I was taught to drive by a professional driver, alertness, eye movement, passenger safety and control of the vehicle are part of the driving. After thirty years of safe driving, it is stunning to see people voting to include "alertness monitoring" .. you want that ?!? It seems like mental illness to me, to want that in your car, when you cannot turn it off.. Secondly I have posted about NO being tracked at all times, and gotten downvotes for that .. really honestly, what are you asking for voters?

It's been an active research topic for big truck and military aircraft operators since the 1980s with a reputation of being a very challenging problem.

And there you go. Self driving cars won't take over because AI is as good as humans, rather because humans regress below AI.

That is very interesting. Do you know what the system used to determine your alertness?

Sounds like a great use case for a train.

Is there a train to Aspen?

There should be.

Trains are great if you live in a country where they go lots of places. At least for me in the US, the driving to get to and from the nearest train terminus can be comparable to the amount of driving to go straight to my destination, even when going surprisingly far. (Of course, trains can be much better if you start and end close to an existing route.)

Well then the simple answer is to stop giving billions to subsidize a handful of electric cars for rich people and build a transit system instead.

Passenger trains went plenty of places in the US and Australia. They were systematically demolished and sold for scrap at a loss.

> Well then the simple answer is to stop giving billions to subsidize a handful of electric cars for rich people and build a transit system instead.

It's simple in that it's easy to say. Stopping giving billions of dollars would also be easy to do. I have no idea how easy (re-)building a rail transit system would be, but I expect pretty hard.

But the problem is that the actual doing of the task, no matter how difficult it is, is the easiest part by far; the hard part is convincing people to do it. Even as a huge fan of rail, if I had the ability to make people drop convictions as firmly held as Americans' that cars are and must always be central, then I would use that power to change other convictions first.

> the hard part is convincing people to do it

It starts with not repeating concern troll thought terminating cliches every time the subject comes up.

> It starts with not repeating concern troll thought terminating cliches every time the subject comes up.

We're not on opposite sides of this. I love trains, and take them wherever I can. But something like a poorly built out rail network doesn't get changed overnight, so just saying "sounds like a great use case for a train" when there isn't one isn't helpful either—a bit like telling a starving person this would be a great time for some food. It's the right answer long term, but not much help short term.

But if there's something specific I said that sounded like I was trying to disparage trains, then maybe you could tell me what it was so that I can say it better.

Well the context was a massively subsidized system that is years away from being reliable, will take well over a decade to roll out, has large negative externalities, requires giving up numerous freedoms, and may not ever work, for solving the same problem trains solve but worse.

The amount of public resources going into roads between now and when driver monitoring makes a difference is staggering, and we could just spend that money on transit and solve numerous other problems at the same time.

Responding to a (admittedly snarky) suggestion that we steer towards an egalitarian future rather than a panopticon when both are equidistant with a tautilogical assertion that we're not in the good future now is the same tired line that comes out anytime anyone suggests improving things rather than expending greater resources making them worse.

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