Self-Driving Features Could Lead To More Sex In Moving Cars, Expert Warns (www.cbc.ca)

An anonymous reader writes: According to CBC.ca, "At least one expert is anticipating that, as the so-called 'smart' cars get smarter, there will eventually be an increase in an unusual form of distracted driving: hanky-panky behind the wheel." Barrie Kirk of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence said, "I am predicting that, once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars. That's one of several things people will do which will inhibit their ability to respond quickly when the computer says to the human, 'Take over.'" Federal officials, who have been tasked with building a regulatory framework to govern driverless cars, highlighted their concerns in briefing notes compiled for Transport Minister Marc Garneau. "Drivers tend to overestimate the performance of automation and will naturally turn their focus away from the road when they turn on their auto-pilot," said the note. The Tesla autopilot feature has been receiving the most criticism as there have been many videos posted online showing Tesla drivers engaged in questionable practices, including reading a newspaper or brushing their teeth.

Comments

And the problem is?

[Virtucon]

What's the issue here? Shit if the car is driving you to your destination then what you do inside the car is your own business. Besides we all worry about people becoming too absorbed in games/VR and other tech that we'd face population decline. This way the nerds can reproduce.

Re:And the problem is?

[khasim]

Yeah. Not much of a "warning". More of an "advertisement".

Re:And the problem is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex! Sex is the problem. Fornication without the godly intent of reproduction to strengthen the army of his lord and savior is a vile abomination and the most gravely mortal of mortal sins. Right up there to self abuse while watching pornographic materials on the internet, which we all know is just a tool for Satan

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I trust an autonomous car to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid accidents or mitigate their damage much more than I trust the general population. I trust a wealthy fuck in an autonomous car more than a trust someone putting on makeup or texting in a regular car.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Inclement weather is not accident avoidance. Especially ice. That is "Oh shit, I lost traction control on three of my tires!"

It is accident avoidance, because if there was no chance of an accident, then losing traction wouldn't have any negative consequences.

Cars already have anti-lock brakes, because a simple machine is already better at preventing you from losing traction that you are. This is precisely the sort of thing that I expect autonomous cars to excel at.

The autonomous system cannot determine if the road 100 meters ahead is covered in a thin sheen of black ice or not.

Why not?

People ARE dumb enough to be fucking behind the wheel while the autonomous system tries to navigate iced up roads.

What the fuck is a human supposed to add to the equation? bad judgement?

The best an autonomous system can do is aggregate road data from other autonomous cars nearby to attempt to determine if there is ice ahead. -- a fat load of good that does if your autonomous vehicle is the one that skids out on it first, or if your vehicle is not receiving such telemetry for whatever reason.

Yeah autonomous cars can do that. And I don't see how being the first human driver to skid out of control is any better.

I trust the idiot fucking behind the wheel of an autonomous vehicle about as much as I trust a politician not to lie. That is to say, not at all.

And like a lying politician, you don't have any better alternatives. Do you really want the guy with the bad judgement in charge of the death machine? The less control humans have the better.

Automation makes the driving experience more predictable by removing human error. This is both good and bad. It leads to conditions where the vehicle will make predictably bad choices, but the occupant will believe otherwise.

If they are making predictable errors, then that makes it all that much easier to fix the errors.

Re:And the problem is?

[ShanghaiBill]

It's hilarious to me that people cite "ice" as an example of their precious human drivers being superior to machines,

Indeed. When a big snowstorm was predicted, Tesla sent out an email to inform owners that they should use Autopilot during the storm, because it would handle the hazardous conditions better than most human drivers.

Re:And the problem is?

[TsuruchiBrian]

(why cant autonomous systems detect ice 100 meters ahead?) IR cameras detect if the road is reflective or absorptive of IR spectra. Water in general is IR absorptive. IR cameras cannot tell the difference between a wet surface and an icy one. Likewise, it cannot tell ice from snow, or slush, even if it has a thermometer to tell it that it is below the freezing point outside. (which would itself be prone to anomalous temperature readings from wind chill, or from engine heat.)

It's photons. Surely the human eye is not magic.

The issue with antilock brakes you mention is only partially correct. Most drivers do not know how to properly brake on ice. For drivers that do, they consistently perform better without antilock brakes.

If humans can do a good job of maintaining traction on ice, then we just need to transfer whatever it is we are doing right into an algorithm, so a machine can do the same thing, but with many of orders of magnitude higher precision.

Most drivers are just bad drivers. So, the antilock brakes save lives overall. That does not mean human drivers that know how to actually drive on inclement surfaces are inferior.

The same logic can be applied to autonomous cars.

For starters, they can instruct the vehicle to drive with more caution-- avoiding going 75mph on the icy highway, for instance.

I don;t really trust people to make this decision. I would fully expect idot drivers to tell their cars to go the maximum speed allowable at all times. For that reason I would rather the car decide when conditions are potentially unsafe (i.e. cold, wet, foggy, etc).

Distracted occupants (and I dare say, a person fucking in the car is going to be quite distracted, or else the sex will have to be really bad.) are not going to be so mindful, until the vehicle mistakes an icy road for a wet one, loses traction and either puts them into the center wall, flips them over, or puts them in a ditch.

On the contrary, I'd say that an autonomous vehicle that realizes it's cold and wet and drives more cautiously as a result, might very well drive better than this same douchebag getting a BJ driving down an icy road.

Even if they are driving alone

[EmperorOfCanada]

Not only will it be couples and singles wailing away, there will be an increase in mobile prostitution. I say increase in that the last time I was in Vegas I was given "promotional" literature advertising that I could get a happy ending limo back to the airport.

While this is sort of a funny thing it is not inconsequential in that most of the time prostitution takes place in an alley or some dark spot near the stroll. I once worked in an office in the shadier part of town and we joked that we had a rubber tree out back as the discards were often thrown into its branches.

Now they won't have to pull into some dark corner but just circle the block for a short while.

Just a few of the zillion cultural and economic changes that self driving cars will impart.

"Expert Warns" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there such a thing as an "expert" on sex in moving cars ?

What are the requirements to become one?

1... Find a partner.
2... ???
3... Profit !

Re:Great

[GrahamCox]

There are a lot of assumptions baked into that rather flippant remark. I actually know some women, and most of them actually like sex. Some even enjoy it in cars, though now we're (long) out of our teens, it's not terribly appealing.

If the only way you can imagine having sex is by pressuring a woman into doing something she doesn't want to do, that says much more about you than it does about women. I feel sorry for you.

Let me be the first to say...

[paulpach]

I am predicting that, once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars

Fucking AWESOME!

Seriously, I would be hard pressed to come up with a better ad for self driving cars.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Virtucon]

well if it looked like a VW camper bus with a Z-bed in back with a Grateful Dead sticker in the back window.... Definitely better.

And in other news, water is wet

[mark-t]

Can I mod a headline down as -1 Obvious?

Re:Surely

[cr0nj0b]

my self driving car better have a GOTO or else