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The Future of the Car
Gandul writes "Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver's seat?"
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Imagine having your own car that can drive you on its own, and you can sit in the back doing whatever you want, be it getting another hours rest on the way to work, watching a movie on the way home, fooling around, getting drunk, you name it.
The drinking aspect alone would make this a best seller. Can you say "Designated Driver comes standard with this model!"
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This is the outrage/hazard formula. I forget whom developed it, but it basically states that if people become more outraged about something (than the hazard the thing presents) they will be willing to give up basic civil liberties.
Basically, if you fire enough people up about some 'thing', they will take action even if the the 'thing' doesn't pose a direct risk/hazard to them directly.
Kind of like the war in Iraq: scare enough people and they will do _anything_ to prevent it. In the USA for example, a country of 500 million people, the odds of being killed by a terrorist attack is infantesimal. Yet here we are, giving up our basic civil liberties in droves.
If you don't think our [US] society as become over-paranoid, try boarding a mass-transit vehicle while wearing a ski mask. You'll be stopped/searched/seized faster than you can say, "Land of the free".
They'll say they have 'probable cause'; you'll say 'it was cold out' or possibly 'I didn't want security cameras recording my every move'.
Welcome back to 1984!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Anyway, I was going 30 and she was going about 5mph. Was she a dangerous driver? Yes! Were either of us speeding? NO!
It seems to be the case that there are two types of dangerous drivers. First, the morons that drive recklessly, drink and drive, cut people up, etc. These people tend to *also* drive fast. The second type is a member of the "oblivious masses" that can only see things that are in front of them. To these people mirrors are odd devices that have limited use. Sometimes their motto seems to be "slow is safe!" regardless of the situation. They don't understand road rules, they make bad decisions (not deliberately - they're not reckless in a deliberate sense) and that causes accidents. The lady I hit falls into this second category. She probably thinks she's a "safe" driver because she never goes over the speed limit. Remember, "slow is safe!".
Likewise, we can split safe drivers into two different categories - ones that stick to the speed limit and ones that don't. 60mph at night in the pouring rain may be an appropriate limit at that point in time, but it bears no similarity with that same stretch of road on a Sunday afternoon in dry sunny conditions. The speed limit is a conservative limit, given that it is not practical to have a variable limit across large sections of freeway. Just because you drive the speed limit doesn't in itself make you a safe driver.
Finally, it will always be true that people that drive slower than me are morons, and people that drive faster than me are idiots. :)