Just to be clear, I do think the obvious solution to terrible things like this is vastly expanded public transit so that people don’t have to rely on cars to get everywhere, not overhyped technology and driving aids that are still only marginally better than a human driver. I just thought the article was interesting.
There is an obvious answer here that both the author and the people in this thread are ignoring.
Driving as a transportation method is a high risk/cost high flexibility/comfort solution.
Pretty much everyone who has accepted driving as their transportation method understands that it’s not the safest way, so a lot of drivers are always willing to take a little bit more risk to save money or something like that.
A better question is, why are we so okay with accepting such high risks for transportation. The human mind is terrible at risk assessment so I think it’s just a culture thing that car accidents are a part of life.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Americans are real good at ignoring issues that don’t affect them personally.
Oh I won’t wreck my car, I’m a “good driver”!
I can’t catch Covid because it’s not real!
School shootings are just false flags the government uses to pass gun control laws!
Donald Trump only wants to remove the dangerous immigrants, not the ones I hire for my business!
We need more people part of the FuckCars, Walk, Bike, & Public Transit online cultures
Need more outreach to get things happening even more. Also my comment on this post would solve a lot of things by not having to redo outreaching to people
Even better, the equivalent irl cultures. Most cities have groups advocating for better bike and pedestrian infrastructure and better public transit.
Both is good for sure. They both affect each other
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Trains? We’ve been using those for over a century now.
They don’t help with last mile.
Have you considered more trains?
I have an HO gauge rail that takes me from my couch to the refrigerator.
Are you very small, or is it a lot of HO track and engines?
It’s like the crawler that takes launch vehicles to the launching pad at Cape Canaveral.
Beautiful
Sure! let’s put train lines in every other street! Brilliant!
There are a lot of other neat inventions that deal with that.
The problem with traffic is caused by lack of investment in public transportation. Have a look at how they solved it in Paris.
The last mile can be 25 mph. That alone will eliminate 99% of traffic deaths, especially if the roads are designed to make it uncomfortable to go above 25 mph.
Bicycles.
More trains, trams, bicycle and/or e-scooter rentals, walking (a mile is what, 20 minutes walk at most?)
Trains?! For last mile?!
Trams, sure, smaller buses that run more often too. More routes.
Bicycles et al so long as they pay insurance, have a plate and know the traffic rules like everyone else - and preferably put them in their own lanes when possible.
Walking… if you have time and physical ability, but who cares about that, right? It’s so cool and eco-friendly to say “just walk 20 minutes”.Trams, sure
Still trains.
If cities are designed better, trains get more effective. Do mixed zoning and put housing on top of shopping, and the last mile plan problem is largely solved. For the rest, bicycles and buses work well.
And walking can be way better with moving walkways. They’re popular at airports, and I’d love to see them more in malls and maybe underground/covered sidewalks.
The most important thing is to commit and make driving more annoying so solutions to the last mile problem can be created. Otherwise you’ll just end up with gridlock.
Still trains.
Subways makes more sense.
put housing on top of shopping
Somewhat common where I live, not common enough though.
Subways
Also trains. If it runs on rails, it’s a train.
Bicycle insurance and plates? Why? That makes zero sense. We have these for cars because cars are dangerous, not just for funsies. Bicycles don’t pose the same danger.
Walking… if you have time and physical ability, but who cares about that, right? It’s so cool and eco-friendly to say “just walk 20 minutes”.
Yeah it is cool and eco-friendly to walk 20 minutes (assuming one is able-bodied, as you mention.)
Bicycles do pose similar dangers. A cyclists running a red light it the typical example. Forces someone else to swerve and hit a post then what?
Cyclists on the whole break traffic laws a lot less than motorists.
Also, I love how your only example of “the dangers of cyclists” involves someone in a car having to react to a cyclist. If everyone is cycling, speeds are low enough to react and typically avoid collisions even if a potential conflict arises. The “forces someone to swerve” phenomenon mostly happens at the speed of motor vehicles.
Cyclists on the whole break traffic laws a lot less than motorists.
That’s utter bullshit, I see them running lights all the time. And riding in groups, clogging the whole road, like they’re on the freakin’ tour de France.
You should know that it doesn’t take “motor vehicle speeds” to cause a (serious) accident. And I suspect you do.
Trains never crash.
Well, they do, but don’t cause traffic deaths.
Because too many people in too many industries that would be negatively affected have too much money.
The technologies mentioned in the article:
lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection
AI-powered traffic systems
On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors
Only one of my cars has just one of those things (2015 Toyota Highlander and it’s the blind spot monitor). That aside, all of my vehicles - cars and motorcycles - are paid off. I’m not going into debt just to have nannies yelling at me.
My vehicles are a means to an end. I would absolutely love more public transit, but there is just a single train station about 12 miles from my house, while my work is only 6 miles in the same direction. “You could bike” you might say, which is a fantastic idea. However, 90% of my commute is on a 55mph rural highway with minimal shoulders and zero bike lanes. It’s literally a perfect candidate for a bus route and bike lanes, yet there are neither, and I am not risking my life on a bicycle next to 55MPH traffic during commuting hours.
Now tell me how I’m the problem.
And they missed some really low hanging, inexpensive solutions that would also work:
- roundabouts
- mass transit
- physical barriers for bike lanes
- zoning changes
Those are all old “technologies” that are proven to be effective and don’t require giving car manufacturers an excuse to make cars even more expensive or retrofitting existing cars.
All of those things are garbage and don’t work, they just drive you nuts until you turn them off.
with every section it just became worse
The technologies to end a lot of problems exist. We aren’t using them because the oligarchs think it’s better this way.
This is definitely a great example of individuals being obstinate and entitled. Just mention you support speed cameras on all roads and find out how many of your friends think speeding is a good given human rights.
Speed cameras are a privacy issue that doesn’t solve the problem of speeding. People are most comfortable driving the speed the road is designed for, and if that speed is too high, the solution is to modify the road for a safer speed. The speeders in your example are right here, for the wrong reason; speed cameras should be rare if they’re allowed to exist at all. They have, at most, a short term benefit, and broad public surveillance is a very serious issue they contribute to.
It’s my understanding that speed cameras don’t actually make roads safer, they just generate revenue for the city.
In my city a program of speed cameras was instituted about a decade ago. A private speed camera corporation lobbied the city to install, maintain and administer the system. Whoever it was that they bribed to approve it did so and the system was installed. For the first year it brought in a bunch of money extorted from the citizens. Then the revenue dropped below the minimum amount that the corporation wrote into the contract as their cut (people figured out where all of the cameras were). At that point the system was costing the city money rather than generating revenue as the corporation had promised. So they started using mobile cameras. This worked for a short time but the blowback was sharp. In the end the system was scrapped.
Autonomous vehicles. They don’t get high, they don’t get distracted, and if they’re made by literally anyone except for Tesla, they have superhuman vision and not only don’t have blind spots, they can also see in the dark and see through steam and fog.
If I could cut my work time by my driving time, because I would be able to work from the car, it would be an absolute game changer for my family life.
This will only ever work if all vehicles were autonomous. Any human interaction introduces unpredictable behavior into an otherwise “perfect” system.
This is misleading and dangerous rhetoric.
Autonomous vehicles - actual autonomous ones, not Tesla bullshit marketing “self-driving” - are already significantly safer than human drivers. Yes, they are limited to certain conditions (they don’t handle inclement weather very well yet) but the point is that they are already improving safety over human drivers.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Additionally, once autonomous vehicles become the standard, you will see a dramatic shift in how the insurance industry operates.
Think about it: if I’m not the one driving, why would I be the one taking on liability? I wouldn’t. The manufacturer would. Suddenly, the insurance industry would be targeting vehicle/software producers instead of individuals. And anyone who chooses to drive themselves anyway? They would almost always be liable by default. Premiums for drivers would skyrocket and this would be a huge disincentive to getting behind the wheel in the first place.
Don’t. Let. The. Perfect. Be. The. Enemy. Of. The. Good.
We all lose out. And it costs lives.
The returns grow exponentially, yes. Even removing some of the bad (i.e., human) drivers is clearly better than *none."
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Public transportation or bust
One of the many things I like about Subaru is that they seem to move useful features from optional to standard, once they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. I bought an Outback in 2016 and paid extra for the EyeSight safety system. Two years later that car was destroyed in an accident (I was T-boned and rolled over twice, without anyone being hurt). I bought another Outback to replace it, but by that time the EyeSight was a standard feature. Subaru now includes EyeSight on all their cars because it saves lives.
They had done similar things with other safety features. Four-wheel disc brakes, anti-lock braking, and all-wheel drive became standard on Sabarus relatively early.
It is also worth noting that the more intrusive EyeSight features, like lane assist, are easy to turn off. There’s a button on the steering wheel for that one. Even if you turn it off, the car will still warn you if you start to cross lanes without using your turn signals, but it will not adjust for you.
Meanline Tesla: were removing radar and make the car blind when it rains to cut costs.
More sensors in the car might help a bit, but the real problem in US is its car dependent infrastructure. If the only way home after a night in the pub is by car, then you’re going to get a lot of drunk drivers. Add to this that bikes have to share road with cars, then it’s a death sentence to ride bike by night.
What technology?
Safety features like lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection…
… AI-powered traffic systems that predict and prevent accidents.…
Impaired driving is also solvable. On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors… Uber is already testing real-time driver sobriety verification…
Why aren’t we using it?
The article doesn’t have an answer.
A Tesla in FSD randomly just veered off the road into a tree. There is video. It makes no sense, very difficult to work out why the AI thought that looked like a good move.
These tools this author is saying we have do not work how people claim they do.
Tesla gets telemetry that should show exactly what happened. We need to require that to be collected with each accident so someone can look for patterns and improvements.
But I’ll agree with the other guy that’s it’s still quite possible this is safer than human drivers already. It makes news because it seems like a ridiculous failure. But what happens when you compare it to the number of accidents caused by people falling asleep or getting distracted, or letting their rage out?
The critical data is the cost in human lives, and it’s quite possible for technology to fail spectacularly while saving lives overall
Tesla self-driving failures are in a class of their own because the asshat in charge didn’t want to outfit the cars with the needed sensors to provide reasonable self-driving capabilities.
Get the data. Get it without putting me and my family at risk.
They only have to work better and more consistently than humans to be a net positive. Which I believe most of these systems already do by a wide margin. Psychologically it’s harder to accept a mistake from technology than it is from a human because the lack of control, but if the goal is to save lives, these safety systems accomplish that.
Evidence, please.
I have literally been in thousands of driving incidences where a human has not randomly driven into a tree.
You are making a claim here: that these AI systems are safer than humans. There is at least one clear counter example to your claim in existence (which I cited - https://youtu.be/frGoalySCns if anyone wants to try to figure out what this AI was doing) and there are others including ones where they have driven into the sides of tractor trailers. I assume you will make an argument about aggregates, but the sample size we have for these AI driving systems relative to the sample size we have for humans is many orders of magnitude different. And having now seen years of these incidents continuing to pile up, I believe there needs to be much more rigorous research and testing before you can make valid claims these systems are somehow safer.
There are 5 classified levels of automation. At the lower levels of automation, the very article you are responding to quotes this evidence for you. Here is another article that gets deeper into it, I haven’t read it all so feel free to draw your own conclusions, but this data has been available and well reported on for many years. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/autonomous-vehicle-safety-statistics.html
It’s all in how you combine the numbers, and yes we need a lot more progress, but …. When was the last time an ai caused a collision because it was texting? How often does a self driving vehicle threaten or harm others with road rage?
I do t know what the numbers are but human driving sets a very low bar so it’s easy to believe even today’s inadequate self-driving is safer
This is the same anecdotal appeal we get over and over while AI cars drive into firetrucks and trees in ways even the most basic licensed driver would not. Then we are told these are safer because people text or become distracted. I am over this garbage. Get real numbers and find a way to do it that doesn’t put me and my family at risk.
I always said this will be the problem. Self-driving cars will never be perfect. They’ll always have different failure modes than human drivers. So at what point is increased safety worth the trade off of new ways to die. Are we there yet?
At what point is it acceptable to the rest of us? Humans will always prefer the risk they know over the one they don’t, even when it’s objectively wrong
https://fuelarc.com/tech/can-teslas-self-driving-software-detect-bus-only-lanes-not-reliably-no/
edit: it’s trivial to find examples of these utterly failing at basic driving. This isn’t close to human performance and it is obvious.
Lane.assist… fine.
Autobreak? Fuck no.
AI?! ffsBecause of how it will go when everyone assumes the car they are trying to merge with will auto brake if they go for it.
It does. It says it’s optional, only in new cars, and it costs extra money, which anyone with half a brain could have told you.
Because its garbage :
No. It doesn’t.
My cars are old and don’t have any of this, and my one experience in a rental car with lane keeping assist was that it pushed me towards a highway barrier in construction where the original lane lines weren’t in use. Terrifying.
I quickly disabled my van’s lane assist feature, having something else giggle the wheel while I’m driving is unnerving.
giggle the wheel
Hehehehe
The solution is to raise better humans who make better choices, not to try to use technology to prevent our bad choices from being worse.
What about a Common Sense brain chip?
What a load of fear mongering. Instead of having people take accountability for their actions we should require “safety features” that have a direct correlation to increased distracted driving. Maybe if somebody is killed we should make regulations around driving drunk? Oh yea pretty sure that exists. Problem is we have a bunch of steering wheel holders, hardly anybody is a driver anymore. Would lane assist and auto braking have prevented this? Possibly. But would lane assist not keep him barrel assing down the road doing up through the next intersection where somebody may decide to cross the road? This is not a fix. We have ALWAYS had the “technology” to avoid traffic deaths, problem is most people are selfish self centered pricks with but a ball of lint between their ears.
The technology isn’t great, but rather than implement it, you want us to expect humans to be great.
I wouldn’t call paying attention while you hurdle down a strip of pavement at 60mph in a 2 ton metal cage being “great”, id call it the minimum. And I’m not saying don’t implement it, I’m just saying it’s absurd to act like forcing it in every car is gonna fix the problem. It’s just gonna make vehicles less affordable and add failure points.
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It’s clearly not the minimum. The minimum is what we have today. It would be great if they act as you say.
Well that’s why I said we have a bunch of steering wheel holders not drivers. The minimum u can do to drive is pay attention to what your ripping in your 2 ton death machine 🤣 most of the people on the road today should NOT be driving as they are doing less than the minimum.
Because people want to drive theur cars instead if let a system handle everything perfectly. Theres no way to have safe driving with people behind the wheel.
