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Comment by alecbz | Hacker News Reader

In the long-long-term, self-driving will get good enough and people will be relying on it so thoroughly that allowing people to drive on their own, with barely any practice, will probably be more risky than it's worth. In say, idk, 100 years (probably sooner), I doubt people will be able to drive their own cars in the way they do today.

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The overwhelming majority of bad driving is caused by alcohol and other drugs, drowsiness, and inattentive driving.

Sober, well-rested human beings who pay full attention to the road are surprisingly good drivers, to the point where I'm not actually sure that robotaxis can reliably beat them yet.

Yeah, a hundred years from now fewer people will drive themselves, but considering how many people DESPISE driving and only do it because it's required of them, that isn't bad.

> The overwhelming majority of bad driving is caused by alcohol and other drugs, drowsiness, and inattentive driving.

> Sober, well-rested human beings who pay full attention to the road are surprisingly good drivers, to the point where I'm not actually sure that robotaxis can reliably beat them yet.

Including "inattentive" and "pay full attention to the road" feels a little tautological? Like, what's your definition of "inattentive"? More or less by definition, if there's an accident, someone was "inattentive" and didn't do the correct thing. Unless they were actively malicious and trying to hurt someone, which I agree would be a tiny minority of car accidents.

Inattentive here means not looking at the road. I've been in car accidents where drivers were looking at the road and got blinded or missed some traffic because they were overloaded with other stuff. That's pretty rare.

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