Comment by dsego | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsego | Hacker News Reader

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It's one of those things were I feel like a frog in boiling water. Drivers need smart assists in cars because I see everybody is checking messages and scrolling on their devices while driving. The tech is solving things but also creating a need for more tech to solve new problems. A lot of things also remain unsolved from the earlier stages of tech. Eg. what happens to our digital lives when we die, can we have legal access so it doesn't rely solely on personal responsibility to share account keys and passwords. How is our digital life secured and backed up without having to come up with home grown solutions and be a sys admin or pay for cloud storage. Why can't we decide on standard protocols for messaging, we had SMS, now we have different messaging apps, people who aren't tech savvy lose years of correspondence when switching devices because they failed to import or transfer data. We still haven't solved data archiving to free us from bit rot and degradation, things like project silica are only in the research phases. All the while, we generate more and more data and make our lives completely dependent on digital services and devices. More and more bank branches are cashless now. We had a massive power grid outage a few years ago and at the convenience store we couldn't buy anything, there was no way to issue a paper receipt or anything like that, the store employees were clueless. I still remember a time when you could buy on tab/credit, they would just write it up, or at least take cache and issue handwritten receipts. And now we're piling AI on top of everything, but operating systems are still crap, software is mostly crap and we have to update our devices every few years because they become slow or stop working. And it feels like younger generations don't mind because it's the new normal, they grew up with smart devices.

>Drivers need smart assists in cars because

Na, drivers have always sucked. When I was growing up the amount of people that drove drunk was just insane. I have no idea how they survived, I guess a lot of them did not.

I worked in car sales. Most of my coworkers drove drunk once a week or more. So basically I've seen 10+ people drive drunk 100+ times, and no doubt they do it more outside my view. No one ever had an accident.

Right, the drunk drivers never had an accident, until that night they kill some other family of 4.

For sure drunk driving increases your odds of an accident. But people make it sound 3-4 beers and you're bound to have an accident. We should be more honest about it.

Most people would not describe the observable behavior of someone just over the legal limit as drunk.

The police sure would. And when people these days talk about drinking and driving, most of it IS the 4 beers after work they're talking about.

The crazy drunkard having stiff drinks at a bar and then driving home after almost falling over walking to his car is pretty rare.

But you're right, in the context of the OP I was responding to, he probably did mean real drunkards being more popular back then.

What a weird straw pile to die one. No one is saying "four beers and you're guaranteed an accident". They're saying "drive drunk and you are a piece of shit, don't do it ever ever ever". There's no room for nuance here because the targets of this advice have lethally impaired judgement. Wiggle room will be exploited by people too drunk to know better, which equals preventable death.

My optometrist told me that when he started clinical practice years ago he was shocked to discover how many people were driving around with severe visual impairments. The usual DMV eye exam is way too easy.

I sold cars for a living so I pay attention to randoms in cars more than most probably. The amount of people (mostly women) sitting WAYYY too low in their car is shocking. I don't know how they can even see most of what's near in front of them.

The way too close to the steering wheel also shocks me, but I guess with that one theyre going to just hurt themselves.

When id sell a car, or even on test drives, I'd try to help them adjust the seat to a sane position but most people that do it wrong seem to be pretty set in their ways and don't want to change it even with some friendly advice and showing them the seat goes way up. It's almost like they don't like looking bigger in their car or something.

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