People have to take tests and get expensive insurance in order to drive, but corporations get to shove unstable tech behind the wheel of a 3-ton machine and let it roam the streets autonomously and we're all supposed to pretend this makes sense when we know that when people are inevitably hurt or killed by these things, the corporations that made them will say no one could have predicted it and they're not responsible.
@fraying Well, when tech overlords like Google bribe (er . . "donate") 22 million to Gov. Gavin Newsome's capaign warchest, who are we little people to be worrying about our safety on the roads? Can't stand in the way of the greedy corporate overlords, now can we?
These machines shouldn't be allowed to leave their garages without the threat of violence enacted on them by everyone they pass, because their presence on our streets is inherently a threat of violence against us.
@fraying I remember reading some dipshit tech journalist giving Musk a glow-up for his “first principles” engineering style. It was just utter bollocks.
Actual first principles thinking:
WTF?!??? Are we seriously going to hand over publicly funded streets and roadways to become tech company profit centers, while making those same public spaces drastically more dangerous to the human pedestrians, cyclists and motorists to whom the roads belong?
Have you ever seen an episode of Canadian M/M show Detective Murdoch? Apart from obvious steampunk-not-exactly-steampunk moments, it captures the optimism of that era that science and rationality leads to inevitable progress.
Until WW1 and the machine-gun spelling the doom of cavalry, wiping out 2500 years of accumulated military experience and leaving millions dead at the battlefiled.
I got the same feeling regarding these electro-autonomouso-peopless transportation.
@fraying
I understand people's concern for incidents like this, it is a real problem. However it is hard for me to ignore over a million people that are killed each year on the roads by human driven vehicles. Personally I would like there to be a lot less cars in general but failing that, I think we have to establish whether driverless cars are going to be safer or not in a robust statistical way and not panic over single incidents. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
@fraying@Duncan Indeed, because the real solution that isn't anti-human is to shrink down space not reserved 100% for humans to a lane & a half at most, and add rail on those.
Yes. Trams. That's the actually sustainable, safe and practical option. It's even a mature technology whose main failure modes are well-known and documented (and so can be appropriately handled).
It's not every profitable for grifters though, so that's why you don't see it in America.
@fraying
I don't even know what that means. Are you saying what I said is untrue, that it is irrelevant or just that you don't enjoy discussing it?
I certainly feel like the data given by @peltast above is questionable. 1 crash per mile driven for autonomous cars seems to be wildly exaggerated. I can not find any credible sources saying anything even close to that. If discussions about statistics are not welcome in this thread I am happy to bow out and leave you all to it.
@Duncan@peltast The "safer than humans" thing is a bullshit talking point because the robot cars do not drive on all roads in all conditions the way people do, and there are far, far fewer of them.
But I'm really not interested in quibbling over stats when this is a moral issue.
@fraying The extent to which our society is ruled by, “Yes, people will die, but this will make rich people more money,” as its sole guiding principle is endlessly horrifying.
@fraying They probably don’t, but someone with money is hoping they will. 🙃 It doesn’t need to be true, it’s the principle of the thing. Of almost everything, really.
@fraying If a city wants to build a bike lane it has to go through like twelve stages of review (including the infamous “environmental impact study”) - want to have unlicensed machine learning enabled cars driving around town? sure, no problem.
@fraying in case it is unclear to other people reading my toot who don't know me: I'm not shitting on the EIS. It is a necessary part of integrating new systems into the environment. It is infamous for taking an absurd amount of time to work through.
I don't understand why we've given a blank check to ML systems who don't have to submit to anything remotely like an EIS (and apparently any number of other hurdles that most infrastructure changes have to deal with.) (I mean understand; greed.)
@fraying I don’t know how the regulations work, but is there a reason these systems can’t be required to - literally- take a driving test, just like a human would? Maybe with a repeat test after each upgrade or significant change to the system, or if they wish to operate in a different area.
@fraying
The accident statistics still show the robots as safer than humans.
Would you be okay with a trade off where there are more accidents, but every single one is caused by humans?
Separately: the police should aggressively ticket the cars when they block traffic or break other rules. Corporations respond to cost!
@StompyRobot The "safer than humans" thing is a bullshit talking point because the robot cars do not drive on all roads in all conditions the way people do, and there are far,far fewer of them.
But I'm really not interested in quibbling over stats when this is a moral issue.
@fraying yes, the stats I have read, say that the robot cars cause less personal injury and death per mile driven than human driven cars. I'm aware of one fatality (the Uber car hitting the crossing woman at night.)
Your claim is that current stats show that self driving cars cause more personal injury and death than human driven cars.
(Note: Advanced cruise control systems where a human must still pay attention, aren't self driving.)
There are protestors in San Fransisco using traffic cones set in front of passengerless auto-taxis, stalling out the AI built into the vehicles, essentially creating an insurmountable logic problem for it.
I'm ambivalent about sabotaging these vehicles, it could escalate into a dangerous situation, certainly worse than what has been reported so far about such vehicles already in operation.
@fraying The extraordinary failure of these first computer-driven cars will hopefully lead to a decisive end to this shit quickly. The failure is so spectacular that it's building such a broad coalition against them. When else does an entire city government -- firefighters and cops included -- transportation advocates, and private car owners all agree?
@fraying Am i the only person who noticed Russ Mitchell at the LA Times doesn't seem to know or understand the difference between parking lights and hazard flashers?
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