Autonomous Cars Will Save Money and Lives

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 24, 2013 @11:58AM from the look-ma-no-hands dept.

cartechboy writes "Autonomous cars are coming even if tech companies have to produce them. The biggest hurdles are the technology (very expensive and often still surprisingly rudimentary) and how vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication happens (one car anticipates or sees an accident, it should tell nearby cars). So what are the benefits to self-driving cars? They may save us thousands of lives and not a small amount of cash. A new study from the Eno Center for Transportation (PDF) suggests that if just 10 percent of vehicles on the road were autonomous, the U.S. could see 1,000 fewer highway fatalities annually and save $38 billion in lost productivity (due to congestion and other traffic problems). Right off the bat you can imagine autonomous driving easily topping your average intoxicated drivers' ability behind the wheel. At a 90 percent adoption mark those same numbers in theory would become: 21,700 lives spared, and a whopping $447 billion saved."

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Re:I like my A4 2T 6 speed by Garridan · 2013-10-24 16:32 · Score: -1, Troll

I, for one, would rather ride a horse at 70mph+. If you can't provide that, I'll be keeping my manual pickup with manual locks, manual windows, manual brakes, manual airbags, and manual manual, thankyouverymuch.

I mean, who the fuck are they trying to fool with "Right off the bat you can imagine autonomous driving easily topping your average intoxicated drivers' ability behind the wheel."? Really? Oh boy, it's safer than a drunk driver! Fuck yeah, sign me up!! Real vote of confidence there.

Seriously: no, I cannot* imagine that the autonomous cars are actually better than the average intoxicated driver, according to modern limits. Your average intoxicated driver gets home safe and doesn't put anybody at risk. Given what I know about the difficulty in training a computer to behave intelligently in unplanned situations, I cannot imagine that autonomous cars are significantly better than your average intoxicated driver.

* Actually, I can imagine a lot of things. I can imagine winning a pulitzer prize for this slashdot post. I've got an amazing imagination, possibly surpassing the imagination of an intoxicated driver.