Car Crashes Into Crowd at SXSW (at least 2 fatalities) | Hacker News Reader

Car Crashes Into Crowd at SXSW (at least 2 fatalities)

themusic.com.au

22 pointsYousefED19 comments

2 dead, 20+ injured and 5 in critical condition.

Why isn't the government and the entire population pushing for and subsidizing autonomous vehicles? Cars are dangerous.

"X were playing at the time."

Is there a band named X or did the writer forget to replace the placeholder?

That's why I always put very noticeable placeholders when doing a first draft. "{{{REPLACE_WITH_BAND}}} were playing at the time."

There's a band call "The XX" - not sure if that's the actual band on stage.

Found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_(American_band)

Interesting way to get your name out, "Is this a band or a typo? I must search Google to find out!"

X has been a band, intermittently, since the late 1970s. The lead male member calls himself John Doe.

In his younger days, he might have offered to chew your brain out in response to your accusation of self-promotion.

That doesn't make you wrong of course. The LA punk scene was a stew of contradictions. Still is.

Yeah, ban cars because cars bad. No people drive cars. People no can think good. People not designed for fast car speed. The car think better for people. Then never bad things happen and all people will be controlled by good cars that think good.

Cars are fine, but people can't be trusted with them. Just like with guns, and, apparently, keyboards.

The Google self-driving cars have been well over 500k without an accident in automatic mode (there was one accident with someone driving it in manual). Autonomous vehicles will result in a huge reduction of automotive fatalities and it's not inconceivable that they would eliminate automotive deaths all together.

Even though I thoroughly enjoy driving, as do many people, it's simply dangerous. Yes, car too big, going too fast, lots of energy stored up, and humans are not perfect, so horrible disasters such as this happen.

Would you rather airplanes be fully autonomous or have a human pilot in constant control 100% of the time?

This isn't a matter of choice for me, from what I gather. It's already obvious to me that very powerful faceless people, somewhere out there, have decided that this WILL happen, one way or another, and the dismal tide will creep up around us all.

It doesn't matter much, whether my car or your car is autonomous, so long as the prevailing wind perpetuates a certain concentration of robotic vehicles on the road. Choice, freedom, privacy, become mere platitudes in such an environment. Meaningless words parroted in the same sentence as terrorism, patriotism, job creation and affordable healthcare.

I really hope that you are trolling. Otherwise, I literally cannot fathom what went through your head as you were typing your comment.

Once the legal framework is in place and the technology finally sorts itself out, I can see a situation where the idea of private car ownership becomes a strange concept in cities. You just have a fleet of "chauffeur" driven cars available that you can call on as you need them.

Of course the fleet can be 'sent out to work' during periods of low demand.

Funnily enough, the Google self-driving car system is called Google Chauffeur.

This is the band that was playing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_%28American_band%29

Is this Hacker News? Or America News?

How is this any worse than the rampant "I haven't done anything of note, but let me tell you what you should be doing to succeed" posts on here?

Those posts are somewhat relevant to computers.

SXSW is a popular tech-oriented conference, thus might qualify as news for nerds.

Besides, my first fear upon reading was that it would be a Uber car. I'm glad that's not the case, but saddened that such a tragedy happened in the first place.

Let's mix two polarizing subjects in the same comment:

Just as shortly after the invention of guns, a safety release was added to prevent accidental discharge, self-driving cars might be a drunk driver's safety catch. I have to agree with some of the above posters.

Here's a detailed map-timeline of the crash, per police reports: http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/img/photos/2014/03/13/5f/...

Found it on twitter from @kathyblackwell with the Austin-American Statesman

People smoking too much weeds? Ban weeds.

Several firearm slaughters? Ban guns.

Couple of knife mass murderings in China? Ban knifes!

1 reported vehicular violent murders? Ban people driving.

Perpetual occupational wars for Democracy(oil) that kill in the millions? Meh.

When empathy fails, there's always an irrelevant political statement to be found.

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