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Cicero posted:Automated, mild penalties? IIRC smaller, immediate punishments are more effective for changing behavior than larger, delayed punishments. The problem with regulating the cell phone in cars is that the cell phone companies would be against it. Their argument would be 'why keep us from making profits...err....why keep people from using their phones?' About the only thing they would allow is no cell phone use in school zones cuz god forbid cell phone mom runs over a herd of kids as she is talking to her hair dresser for the next appointment.
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Aug 21, 2015 12:03
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Didn't I read some study in this very thread that concluded that cell phones are just a symptom of generally lovely driving habits and preventing that behavior didn't positively impact road safety?
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Aug 21, 2015 17:21
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RazNation posted:The problem with regulating the cell phone in cars is that the cell phone companies would be against it. quote:No state bans all cell phone use for all drivers. However, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia (plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands) prohibit all drivers from using hand-held cell phones while driving.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:58
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James The 1st posted:But the car is freedom from government trains!
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Aug 21, 2015 18:20
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We could speed adoption of self-driving cars by mandating that all new cars be self-driving by 20XX, and offering subsidies (or implementing penalties) for people with manually driven cars to upgrade.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:20
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Unless the self-driving module can be inexpensively ported to an existing older car, that'd be a giant middle finger to a lot of people who can't just casually buy a new car.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:42
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Javid posted:Didn't I read some study in this very thread that concluded that cell phones are just a symptom of generally lovely driving habits and preventing that behavior didn't positively impact road safety? Dingdingdingdingding Driver "training" in the U.S. is a godamned joke.
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Aug 21, 2015 21:07
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While we're at Driver training. The programm "accompanied driving" was a big sucess in Germany. Summary: You can drive when turning 17, instead of 18, but you may only drive in the presence of an adult with a license (30+, and some other conditions). Result: 28.5% less accidents. In 2008 33% of all driver tests were of the "accompanied" driving thing. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begleitetes_Fahren (german and french only). Tank Boy Ken fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 21:26
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MrYenko posted:Dingdingdingdingding Yeah I talked to some US friends in fly-over states and asked them about drivers licensing and I was shocked and afraid when they told me how ridiculously easy it is. Basically to get their full no-restrictions license that lets them drive everything short of a bus or big-rig on the freeways or anywhere it's basically "Can you pull out of this parking lot without hitting anything? Ok drive around the block, nah don't worry about parallel parking or backing in that's too advanced. Know what a stop sign is? Red light? Ok you're good to go." It's much stricter where I live in Canada, but we have a TV show called "Canada's worst driver" and these people are beyond bad, like they don't even understand the basics of how to control a vehicle let alone any of the rules of the road. I can understand if they're some old boomer that got their license in 1960 in Grainfuck Manitoba, but a lot of the people on the show are 20-somethings from big cities where they will absolutely fail you for not shoulder-checking enough let alone not knowing how to reverse or not knowing what any of the road signs mean. It really seems like every 5-10 years or so drivers should have to re-test to prove they still know how or are physically able drive (or ever did). Yet when you even suggest maybe after 70 you should get checked out the whole seniors lobby comes out screaming "ageism" and any time anyone suggests stricter testing and training to get your license in the first place it's denying people the right to travel. I guess the most hosed up thing is that we have a society where you'll be out of work and homeless if you can't drive, so any "attack" on driving is a potential attack on people's ability to get to work or have a life. I got into a big argument once with a socialist who was really mad the government wanted to have stricter drinking driving penalties like maybe actually taking peoples licenses away. He said it was an attack on the poor because the poor are more likely to drink and drive and more likely to be car-dependant. I of course argued that it's a hell of a lot more "progressive" to stop drunks from killing them selves and others on the road even if some working class people might drink and drive their way out of a job. He was having none of that, the state should never stop anyone from driving under any circumstances because working class people gotta drive to work and anything short of that is class war.
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Aug 21, 2015 21:40
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If we had better alternatives to the car, then taking away someone's right to drive would be an effective punishment that isn't also basically a death sentence. E: Also wouldn't a socialist want a little class warfare?
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Aug 21, 2015 21:50
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Tank Boy Ken posted:While we're at Driver training. The programm "accompanied driving" was a big sucess in Germany. Summary: You can drive when turning 17, instead of 18, but you may only drive in the presence of an adult with a license (30+, and some other conditions). Result: 28.5% less accidents. In 2008 33% of all driver tests were of the "accompanied" driving thing. Isn't this the same thing as a driving permit in the US? In my home state, I had a permit that let me drive at 15 as long as my parents were with me in the car. You even had to log so many hours before it would count towards earning your license when you turned 16 (pretty much everyone's parents except mine fudged this though).
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Aug 21, 2015 22:07
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Javid posted:Unless the self-driving module can be inexpensively ported to an existing older car, that'd be a giant middle finger to a lot of people who can't just casually buy a new car. I just really don't want us to go, "well, some people are poor, so we'll just have to deal with tens of thousands of people dying needlessly for another several years. Oh well." That's stupid.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:28
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Well you still have to do the required minimum of 18 hours of normal driving with a Driving Teacher. And a certain amount of hours of special driving (Autobahn, City, Highway). Which amounts to at 12 additional hours. Though most people will have more normal driving hours. ~30 is normal. And there is a theory test and practical test. The practical test is about 45 minutes with a list of maneuvers out of which a certain number are required to perform. Some people in my school class had 3 tries until they achieved that. I think the total cost for the permit + tests is around 1,500 € nowadays. And that's just for normal cars, with a limit on the weight of a trailer you'd be allowed to pull.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:30
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Cicero posted:Ideally I was thinking modest penalties with fairly generous subsidies if you're low-income. Kind of like Obamacare. The thing is the subsidies would need to be like "you only pay $500 of the cost" or maybe even "take your current car to a government office on the weekend, we give you a new self driving car the same day" for it to actually not be a massive problem for the poor. xergm posted:Isn't this the same thing as a driving permit in the US? In my home state, I had a permit that let me drive at 15 as long as my parents were with me in the car. You even had to log so many hours before it would count towards earning your license when you turned 16 (pretty much everyone's parents except mine fudged this though). In my home state it was the same thing, except you couldn't drive on your own at all until 17, and you could only get an unrestricted license at 18 if you'd already spent a full year on the restricted one (which included not being able to drive between like 10 pm and 6 am unless you could prove it was for work/school/an emergency). Your driver's permit needing an adult in the car to go anywhere thing started at 16 and 6 months too.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:52
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I know someone who just got their fourth DUI and is only losing their license for three years. I feel like if any offense warrants draconian punishments and a three-strikes type deal, that should be it.Cicero posted:Ideally I was thinking modest penalties with fairly generous subsidies if you're low-income. Kind of like Obamacare. I feel like you have somewhat unrealistic ideas of the size of the gap between the cost of a brand-new car and what people in poverty conditions can afford. A person or family with a paid-for $300 beater and bare-minimum liability insurance would essentially need the entire thing to be paid for to afford it at all - and that's assuming they could be approved for financing, which is a whole other can of worms. The comparison to obamacare isn't accurate since a car isn't a standard employment benefit, and insurance doesn't require you to take on a massive debt up front. Now if there was a module that could be bolted into any existing vehicle for a couple thousand and could be financed over a 24 month period with a subsidy, that's a lot more viable. Javid fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 23:08
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Javid posted:I know someone who just got their fourth DUI and is only losing their license for three years. I feel like if any offense warrants draconian punishments and a three-strikes type deal, that should be it. quote:Now if there was a module that could be bolted into any existing vehicle for a couple thousand and could be financed over a 24 month period with a subsidy, that's a lot more viable. quote:This is the first public demo of Cruise, a new technology and business from a Y Combinator startup aptly named Cruise Automation. It's designed as a computer-controlled driving system that can take over when you're behind the wheel. Turn it on like typical cruise control and it will keep the car going, but the added smarts will steer, brake, and avoid objects.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:15
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Cicero posted:By the time such a law would start applying penalties, self-driving cars would have been on the road long enough that there would be a sizable pool of used ones, presumably. Although honestly I'd be ok with enormous subsidies to get old cars off the road, too. The thing is we are talking about people driving $500 buckets of poo poo that are 30 years old right now because they can't afford anything better. Unless you're talking a phase in period of like 40 years it's not really practical to just wait for there to be a large enough pool of used ones. Hell by that point the used ones might not really be as compliant as they used to be.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:22
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Nintendo Kid posted:The thing is we are talking about people driving $500 buckets of poo poo that are 30 years old right now because they can't afford anything better. Unless you're talking a phase in period of like 40 years it's not really practical to just wait for there to be a large enough pool of used ones. Hell by that point the used ones might not really be as compliant as they used to be.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:27
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Nintendo Kid posted:The thing is we are talking about people driving $500 buckets of poo poo that are 30 years old right now because they can't afford anything better. Unless you're talking a phase in period of like 40 years it's not really practical to just wait for there to be a large enough pool of used ones. Hell by that point the used ones might not really be as compliant as they used to be.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:37
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Cicero posted:Yeah, having a subsidized conversion kit sounds like a good way to go then. Not so much subsidized, it basically needs to be free and installed for free.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:39
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I love that you're all assuming that someone who can't (or won't) afford more than an absolute bare-bones, mostly-worn out automobile, is going to be able and willing to spend even more money to purchase and then maintain a vastly more complex and expensive vehicle. Any kind of driver aid (or driver replacement,) is going to require maintenance and repair, (and I suspect that any type of automatic driver is going to require significant ongoing maintenance to remain operable. No auto manufacturer is going to let their automatic drive system engage if it has a broken sensor, or a faulty servo motor, as an example. It's an enormous liability issue, past even the so-far mostly un-discussed issue of who is at fault in an accident involving an automatic driver.) There's already evidence that the day of the $500 beater is behind us. Many vehicles being produced today are vastly more complex than those of just ten years ago. Granted, many of these complexities result in an overall more reliable vehicle, but at the same time, many mechanical or electrical issues that would have been inconveniences or inefficiencies in an older car, will prevent a newer one from starting or running, at all. (Hello limp mode.)
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Aug 22, 2015 00:50
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Nintendo Kid posted:Not so much subsidized, it basically needs to be free and installed for free.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:02
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Cicero posted:For the poorest, yeah. A sliding scale of subsidy, maybe? If what you're after is a rapid conversion you're going to need to give away either the whole cars or the installation and device itself to older cars for free up to like people making $50,000 a year even.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:24
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How about spend all that money on transit and road safety instead of ridiculous pie in the sky technology that probably won't even work effectively anywhere outside of a limited access highway. Self driving cars are gently caress off useless in urban environments and show no signs of improvement. They either have to be so cautious it's faster to walk, or risk running people down, or worse, will require city streets to become absolutely enforced and re-designed car-only zones further eroding travel options for anyone not in a motor vehicle.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:49
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We already have self-driving cars: We call them public transportation and taxis. Some day Google's technology will start to bear fruit, and it could be quite wonderful for those who can afford it, but that day isn't within the foreseeable future and it's unclear how it will actually represent a material improvement rather than a luxury convenience.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:15
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Baronjutter posted:How about spend all that money on transit and road safety instead of ridiculous pie in the sky technology that probably won't even work effectively anywhere outside of a limited access highway. Self driving cars are gently caress off useless in urban environments and show no signs of improvement. They either have to be so cautious it's faster to walk, or risk running people down, or worse, will require city streets to become absolutely enforced and re-designed car-only zones further eroding travel options for anyone not in a motor vehicle. It is lunacy to pretend that the problems of not even legal to actually sell yet early self-driving cars are magically going to persist forever.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:18
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Baronjutter posted:How about spend all that money on transit and road safety instead of ridiculous pie in the sky technology that probably won't even work effectively anywhere outside of a limited access highway. Self driving cars are gently caress off useless in urban environments and show no signs of improvement. They either have to be so cautious it's faster to walk, or risk running people down, or worse, will require city streets to become absolutely enforced and re-designed car-only zones further eroding travel options for anyone not in a motor vehicle. As a cyclist I am beyond stoked about driverless cars, because they're a lot less likely to kill me.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:44
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Nintendo Kid posted:If what you're after is a rapid conversion you're going to need to give away either the whole cars or the installation and device itself to older cars for free up to like people making $50,000 a year even. Agreed, we will not see conversion to complete automation in any rapid fashion without a huge mandate and financial support. If the first fully automated cars come on line in 5 years (in Mercedes, Tesla, and other expensive cars), it will be another 10ish years before it's in every new Focus, Civic, and Corolla. Add another 10 years for those to start popping up in large quantities in the used market, and you're looking at 25 years before automated cars start to become the majority. The only way to speed this up would be with government mandate and huge subsidies.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:57
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Nintendo Kid posted:It is lunacy to pretend that the problems of not even legal to actually sell yet early self-driving cars are magically going to persist forever. Kaal posted:We already have self-driving cars: We call them public transportation and taxis. quote:Some day Google's technology will start to bear fruit, and it could be quite wonderful for those who can afford it, but that day isn't within the foreseeable future and it's unclear how it will actually represent a material improvement rather than a luxury convenience. Self-driving will benefit transit, too. Not having the fixed cost of one driver per vehicle means it's a lot easier for transit systems to do vans or even sedans to lower-density areas for which a whole bus would be overkill. Pseudo-transit in the form of self-driving carpooling taxis will probably also be a thing. edit: \/\/\/ Yeah I know some trains are automated, I think Kaal meant that they're 'self-driving' whenever the user doesn't have to drive, though. Cicero fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 03:00
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A lot of public transit is either fully automated, or can be fully automated with a flip of a switch. For instance the PATCO subway that travels between Philadelphia and South Jersey has been automation-enabled since 1969 (they still require operators to do one semi-manual trip a day just in case the equipment breaks, so they keep their training edge). Vancouver's rail transit is fully automated in the same system used for the automated people mover for JFK airport in NYC. And so on.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:03
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Transport and negotiating spaces is not just a spacial but social task. Self-driving cars will lack that social sense. Ok they slam on the breaks every time someone "jay walks". Now everyone knows you can just dart out in front of a car any time you want. Drivers get mad at this because now drivers are constantly having the breaks of their self-driving cars slam on. So what's the solution? A brutal crack down on jay-walking? That's going to make walking and cities awful. Give self-driving cars the right to sometimes hit people or intimidate them out of the way if they're being shits? When I'm walking or driving in the city I'm always looking for eye-contact, using a ton of non-verbal communication. Self driving cars aren't going to be able to do that, which will make them either really inefficient in cities or we'll have to even further crack down on walking.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:01
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Cicero posted:Those aren't self-driving. Those are a lot more "self-driving" than a car where the user needs to stay at the controls, ready to take over at a moment's notice because the software can't deal with anomalies. I mean have you used some of these cars with "self-driving" features? Lane assist is great but I'm not going to start reading a book in the driver's seat. I'm all for driverless cars some day, but frankly it's a bit absurd to be talking about nextgen cruise-control as a transportation revolution. Fundamentally, self-driving features fall into two camps, with the truly autonomous features holding the lion's share of the promise of the technology; the Chauffeur is a lot farther off than the Backseat Driver. And I think these pie-in-the-sky ideas about how these cars are going to drastically improve safety are kind of forgetting the important bit: the users are still in control of the vehicle. The road rage maniacs and harried commuters aren't going to wait around for Google to carefully and legally navigate to their intended destination, stopping before every yellow light, etc. They're going to switch it over to manual and drive like they want to drive. The old blind fogies and distracted texters aren't going to magically become better at reacting to emergencies - they'll have the same problems they already do. This technology is going to be most used by those who are already prudent, which kind of limits the safety benefit. Frankly there is a lot of uncertain terrain here that's going to need to be covered, and it's going to take decades before it starts to have the social impact that you're alleging. Kaal fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 04:08
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Kaal posted:Those are a lot more "self-driving" than a car where the user needs to stay at the controls, ready to take over at a moment's notice because the software can't deal with anomalies. I mean have you used some of these cars with "self-driving" features? Lane assist is great but I'm not going to start reading a book in the driver's seat. I'm all for driverless cars some day, but frankly it's a bit absurd to be talking about nextgen cruise-control as a transportation revolution. Fundamentally, self-driving features fall into two camps, with the truly autonomous features holding the lion's share of the promise of the technology; the Chauffeur is a lot farther off than the Backseat Driver. When you've got self driving cars it is inevitable that you will have self driving car hackers. Even if you manage to somehow force every car on the road to be self driving, people will get a thrill out of hacking them so they can go around racing and driving dangerously for the thrill of it.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:25
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No company will want to bet their asses on the software either, so there will probably a disclaimer on all of them that you still have to sit there watching attentively ready to take over if anything happens so they can blame you when it fucks up. Business-friendly states will probably pass laws to similar effect. I can imagine the shitstorm the first time someone gets found liable for the poor decisions of their self-driving car in Texas or some equally terrible place. Don't get me wrong, I really wanna see this tech take off (so I can skip the tedious part of long trips and read or whatever) but there are a lot of issues - technological and human - to squash before they even go on the market, much less be mandated for everyone.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:46
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How do self-driving cars solve the infrastructural bomb of sprawling suburbanization?Baronjutter posted:Yeah I talked to some US friends in fly-over states and asked them about drivers licensing and I was shocked and afraid when they told me how ridiculously easy it is. Basically to get their full no-restrictions license that lets them drive everything short of a bus or big-rig on the freeways or anywhere it's basically "Can you pull out of this parking lot without hitting anything? Ok drive around the block, nah don't worry about parallel parking or backing in that's too advanced. Know what a stop sign is? Red light? Ok you're good to go." What state were those (Also, using the term "fly-over" is kind of condescending for people and not even a useful descriptor)? I learned how to drive in rural Michigan and I still had to parallel park and was taught about roundabouts in class. I'd imagine if you grew up in those areas in the 70's or 80s, they probably didn't have anything more complicated than red lights or stop signs. Eskaton fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 04:48
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Eskaton posted:How do self-driving cars solve the infrastructural bomb of sprawling suburbanization? They make it worse.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:55
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Nintendo Kid posted:A lot of public transit is either fully automated, or can be fully automated with a flip of a switch. For instance the PATCO subway that travels between Philadelphia and South Jersey has been automation-enabled since 1969 (they still require operators to do one semi-manual trip a day just in case the equipment breaks, so they keep their training edge). Vancouver's rail transit is fully automated in the same system used for the automated people mover for JFK airport in NYC. And so on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Express Toronto's Scarborough RT was the first to have a moving block ATO system, back in 1985. Most automated transit systems worldwide use an incrementally improved version of that system (called SelTrac). Canada was way ahead of the transit curve in the 1970s and 1980s. Every once in a while, the Conservative Party gets control of the government up there and forces the sell-off of a couple of Canada's Crown Corporations to private companies in order to "cut costs and encourage competition." This happened to several transit crown companies (Flyer, Orion and UTDC) in the 1990s, which ended up in the hands of companies like Bombardier and Daimler Chrysler, who did nothing but mooch the tech for the last two decades. A shame, really, seeing as all of that tech is still relevant today and Canada now gets gouged something serious for new installs when they used to get transit tech at cost, increasing costs by $$Billions.  Edit: This is what 1980s-era SelTrac ATO looks like: 
Varance fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 05:01
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Baronjutter posted:Transport and negotiating spaces is not just a spacial but social task. Self-driving cars will lack that social sense. Ok they slam on the breaks every time someone "jay walks". Now everyone knows you can just dart out in front of a car any time you want. Drivers get mad at this because now drivers are constantly having the breaks of their self-driving cars slam on. So what's the solution? A brutal crack down on jay-walking? That's going to make walking and cities awful. Give self-driving cars the right to sometimes hit people or intimidate them out of the way if they're being shits? When I'm walking or driving in the city I'm always looking for eye-contact, using a ton of non-verbal communication. Self driving cars aren't going to be able to do that, which will make them either really inefficient in cities or we'll have to even further crack down on walking. Kaal posted:Those are a lot more "self-driving" than a car where the user needs to stay at the controls, ready to take over at a moment's notice because the software can't deal with anomalies. I mean have you used some of these cars with "self-driving" features? Lane assist is great but I'm not going to start reading a book in the driver's seat. I'm all for driverless cars some day, but frankly it's a bit absurd to be talking about nextgen cruise-control as a transportation revolution. Fundamentally, self-driving features fall into two camps, with the truly autonomous features holding the lion's share of the promise of the technology; the Chauffeur is a lot farther off than the Backseat Driver. "This extremely recent technology isn't good enough yet!" It's almost like these things will improve over time. Have you not seen the prototypes for fully self-driving cars yet? They're pretty advanced already! They still need a few years in the oven and initially they'll probably only work in decent weather, but that's still huge. quote:And I think these pie-in-the-sky ideas about how these cars are going to drastically improve safety are kind of forgetting the important bit: the users are still in control of the vehicle. The road rage maniacs and harried commuters aren't going to wait around for Google to carefully and legally navigate to their intended destination, stopping before every yellow light, etc. They're going to switch it over to manual and drive like they want to drive. quote:The old blind fogies and distracted texters aren't going to magically become better at reacting to emergencies - they'll have the same problems they already do. This technology is going to be most used by those who are already prudent, which kind of limits the safety benefit. Frankly there is a lot of uncertain terrain here that's going to need to be covered, and it's going to take decades before it starts to have the social impact that you're alleging.
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Aug 22, 2015 05:09
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I get that you're excited about this technology, but it just isn't as mature as you seem to think it is. "Fully Self-Driving" cars (aka autonomous driverless vehicles) aren't expected to hit the markets for at least a decade, if not several decades. The legal issues alone will take many years to sort out.
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Aug 22, 2015 05:56
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I still have this dystopian image of the future in my head, where roads are gridlocked due to a 300% increase in road traffic caused by empty vehicles deadheadind around and/or acting as self-driving billboards designed to capture the attention of people who are sitting in their cars with nothing better to do than read or look out the window.
Varance fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 06:06
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