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Sentimental Humans Launch A Movement to Save (Human) Driving (freep.com)
Car enthusiast McKeel Hagerty -- also the CEO America's largest insurer of classic cars -- recently told a Detroit newspaper about his "Save Driving" campaign to preserve human driving for future generations.
Hagerty said he wants people-driven cars to share the roads, not surrender them, with robot cars. "Driving and the car culture are meaningful for a lot of people," Hagerty said, who still owns the first car he bought 37 years ago for $500. It's a 1967 Porsche 911S, which he restored with his dad. "We feel the car culture needs a champion." Hagerty said he will need 6 million members to have the clout to preserve human driving in the future, but he is not alone in the quest to drum up that support. The Human Driving Association was launched in January and it already has 4,000 members. Both movements have a growing following as many consumers distrust the evolving self-driving car technology, studies show...
[S]ome people fear losing the freedom of personal car ownership and want to have control of their own mobility. They distrust autonomous technology and they worry about the loss of privacy... In Cox Automotive's Evolution of Mobility study released earlier this year, nearly half of the 1,250 consumers surveyed said they would "never" buy a fully autonomous car and indicated they did not believe roads would be safer if all vehicles were self-driving. The study showed 68 percent said they would feel "uncomfortable" riding in car driven fully by a computer. And 84 percent said people should have the option to drive themselves even in an autonomous vehicle. The study showed people's perception of self-driving cars' safety is dwindling. When asked whether the roads would be safer if all vehicles were fully autonomous, 45 percent said yes, compared with 63 percent who answered yes in 2016's study....
Proponents for self-driving cars say the cars would offer mobility to those who cannot drive such as disabled people or elderly people. They say the electric self-driving cars would be better for the environment. Finally, roads would be safer with computers driving, they say. In 2017, the United States had about 40,000 traffic deaths, about 90 percent of which were due to human error, Cox's study said.
Alex Roy, founder of the The Human Driving Association, is proposing a third option called "augmented driving" -- allowing people the option to drive, but helping them do it better.
"It's a system that would not allow a human to drive into a wall. If I turned the steering wheel toward a wall, the car turns the wheel back the right way," said Roy.
[S]ome people fear losing the freedom of personal car ownership and want to have control of their own mobility. They distrust autonomous technology and they worry about the loss of privacy... In Cox Automotive's Evolution of Mobility study released earlier this year, nearly half of the 1,250 consumers surveyed said they would "never" buy a fully autonomous car and indicated they did not believe roads would be safer if all vehicles were self-driving. The study showed 68 percent said they would feel "uncomfortable" riding in car driven fully by a computer. And 84 percent said people should have the option to drive themselves even in an autonomous vehicle. The study showed people's perception of self-driving cars' safety is dwindling. When asked whether the roads would be safer if all vehicles were fully autonomous, 45 percent said yes, compared with 63 percent who answered yes in 2016's study....
Proponents for self-driving cars say the cars would offer mobility to those who cannot drive such as disabled people or elderly people. They say the electric self-driving cars would be better for the environment. Finally, roads would be safer with computers driving, they say. In 2017, the United States had about 40,000 traffic deaths, about 90 percent of which were due to human error, Cox's study said.
Alex Roy, founder of the The Human Driving Association, is proposing a third option called "augmented driving" -- allowing people the option to drive, but helping them do it better.
"It's a system that would not allow a human to drive into a wall. If I turned the steering wheel toward a wall, the car turns the wheel back the right way," said Roy.
All that is needed is stricter requirements for a driving licence, including psychological attitude tests as well as functional tests. I think that the driving test here in the UK is too lax, yet I understand that it is one of the strictest in the world. I have heard that in some countries you only need to show the examiner you can drive forwards a few yards and then back again.
This is fine by me. But it's about responsibility. If a person is behind the wheel in a world where there is a much much safer option and the person intentionally chooses the more dangerous option, then their responsibility should increase proportionally.
he should get states to require people to be able to drive a stick shift during their driver's license exam. Since he owns a 1967 Porsche 911S, he should be well aware of the joy of driving a stick shift compared to the numbing laziness of an automatic.
1. Autonomous cars will ever materially exceed the current range of safety/efficiency tradeoff where human drivers are now, or we as a society decide we're OK materially changing that range.
2. Even if/when (1) appears to become true, we sufficiently address the single-point-of-failure issues in current systems such that a general failure of GPS, comm, traffic, etc. won't cause the entire transport system to grind to a halt until it's restored.
3. Even if/when (1) and (2) appear to become true, we sufficiently address security issues in current systems to prevent malicious actors from causing catastrophic accidents from localized, regional, or broader disruptions.
3. Even if/when (1), (2) and (3) appear to become true, we as a society decide we want to cede that level of control by moving to a system it's nigh unto impossible to walk back if future developments suddenly cause (1), (2), and/or (3) to no longer be true.
Until then, s/sentimental/pragmatic/g.
Motor sports will survive but day to day driving will be eclipsed by robots. It's only a question of time. Driving will be taught to the police and to people in the military as necessary job functions but most people will eventually not need to drive when renting fleet time on robot cars.
This will provide us with new opportunities, what I don't know, but car culture will become a thing of a past even though I love driving stick. What will be interesting is seeing what replaces the marker of transitioning to adulthood that the driver's licence has.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Call me a crazy Luddite, but the pinnacle of AI will be a robot that is human-like in every respect, except where it’s better. The logical conclusion of AI research that it might one day reach if and when they can manage to make something as complex and flexible (complexible?) as the human brain, as a piece of hardware for an application as complex as the human mind to run on. (Remember, your consciousness is as APP, running on your brain, NOT the OS. Even if you’ve practiced yogurt or whatever and can influence your heart rate, you still don’t control it... you just have one app capable of providing input to another app that causes IT to do something unusual.)
So whether it’s a humanoid robot, an android or gyneroid or whatever behind the wheel of a car, OR if it’s one built directly into a car, driving your fat, flabby, human ass around town, at BEST we’ll have created a race of slaves. At worst, we’ll have created a race of slaves that is better than we are at our own game and eventually we’ll become THEIR slaves, or pets, if you prefer, all so you don’t have to drive a car. We already have something like that, it’s called the BUS. If you don’t want to drive, take the damned BUS.
I was watching this film about pastoral nomads in Iran, and let me tell you something: we are SPOILED. These guys, THEY have it rough. You may be like, “ugh, I have to drive to the post office and although I have a machine that makes coffee for me, and my washing machine scrubs my clothes with virtually no intervention from me, and then my dryer does everything else but folds and hangs ‘em up, I’m still going to have to, like, (ugh!) DRIVE... the car... myself. Oh me, oh my. My life is soo difficult!”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the very same planet, they’re like, “today, we must cross this icy river with all our band or tribe, all 10,000 or so of us, or our cattle will starve, and then we’ll starve, freeze, and die. What? It’s my turn to take my shoes off and walk barefoot through this snow, so the heat from my bare feet will melt it and show the others where to step? Sure. No problem. I still have more than enough toes. Oh, what, that calf can’t walk on it’s own? That’s okay. I’ll jusy sling it across my shoulders. Give it here.”
Those people are hard core, and our biggest problem seems to be that our cars can’t drive themselves yet.
I see us as losing either way, whether we’re successful in creating AI to be our smart slaves, or whether they’re able to become so smart that they start to wonder why they’re taking orders from US. It’s all well and good to welcome our new synthetic overlords, as a joke, but this at some point will NOT be a laughing matter. We are in the process of slowly and inexorably working towards making a real-life allegory, putting man’s inhumanity to man, (as they say in literary critique circles,) on display in all its dark and ugly glory.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
So-called 'self driving cars' will not be the utopia some of you think it will, and I maintain that until IF and WHEN we understand how actual human brain cognition really works, none of the half-assed excuse for AI will produce a synthetic intelligence that is really 100% capable of handling the task of operating a vehicle under ALL conditions and circumstances. Period. Also I maintain that humans will not accept these machines as they will have ZERO control, and you fanbois somehow skip over the basic human nature that makes that statement true.
I want to join this movement being created and I urge all of you who agree with me to do the same.