this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Futurology
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This doesn't make me feel safe.
In the long-term, this makes me feel safer. On average, humans are pretty terrible drivers, and robots don't get sleepy, drunk, or distracted. I just hope that there aren't too many high-profile crashes during the transition, which could lead to societal pushback of the technology. "Autonomous vehicle kills a human" is a much more shareable headline than "Yet another human driver kills a human".
Yes, I think that eventually self-driving cars will be safer, faster, and work better in heavy traffic. If they can all talk to each other then they can drive at high speed, bumper to bumper, and coordinate lane changes, communicate road hazards, and stuff like that. But I also think we're a long way from that reality. As long as human drivers are on the road, the autonomous cars and trucks will still have to follow the basic rules that humans do, and be able to react to the unpredictable driving of bad drivers. I live in Washington, and it seems like about 95% of the people on the road here never even went through any sort of driver's training or driver's ed. These are the worst drivers I've ever seen, anywhere.
Long term, yeah. I watch videos of self-driving car rides though. Not so much today.