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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.

24 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. All that's needed by nukenerd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:All that's needed by hey! · · Score: 2

      The problem with people's self-assessment as drivers is they judge themselves as they are on a good day, when they are performing best. On his best days, an average driver performs considerably better than most of the other drivers on the road, who are having a typical day. This does not make him a good driver; to understand the risk a driver represents to others you have to evaluate his performance on his worst days, which nobody does, particularly to themselves.

      We can pretty much assume that when you take your driving test, you're performing the best that you can. So somebody who barely scrapes "acceptable" is going to be much less than acceptable on a typical day of driving. You suppress all your bad habits during the test: things like rolling into an intersection; changing lanes without signalling; cutting people off; driving with one or even (for short periods) no hands; tailgating; speeding; weaving, etc.

      I think self-driving car technology can in fact be used to improve human driving performance, because the inputs to the system can detect many of these bad habits. Every time you tailgate or cut someone off, the car would automatically chime an alarm; at the end of the year your alarms would be toted up and if you exceed an allowance you pay an insurance surcharge.

      The principle is simple: people behave better when they're being monitored. If the average driver consistently drove as well has he is capable of driving, then the roads would be much safer for everyone.

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      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re: All that's needed by hey! · · Score: 2

      The difference is that you can imagine all the tricky corner cases you want, and then engineer a robot so it will consistently handle them. You can train a human to handle them, but whether he does or not depends on how he feels that day.

      Now there may be combinations of factors that are unforeseen in testing that a robot might fail to handle properly, but the same can be said for humans. I very strongly suspect that most people's notion of how could they are in tricky, surprise driving situations is over-inflated by their sense of mastery over routine driving. You might even have successfully pulled off a few occasional emergency maneuvers in your life, but that might just have been dumb luck.

      What you really ought to do is go out on a track and practice things that are too dangerous to do on the road, over and over again until you *know* you can handle them. I wish this kind of training was routinely available to drivers.

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      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Ok, but your responsibility increases by DalM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Ok, but your responsibility increases by RhettLivingston · · Score: 2

      Everybody is an idiot at some point. Everyone drives distracted at some point in time, usually during some sort of emergency, while upset due to a fight, late for a date, etc. We are selfish and that doesn't mix well with the fact that choosing to drive is making a decision not just for yourself, but for everyone you interact with on the road. Most of those times, no problem. Every once in a while though, whammy.

      Maybe we can come up with a way to detect adrenaline and exhaustion and disable driving of the vehicle by drivers with either state. That would indeed stop a lot of accidents.

      If we could detect attentiveness to driving (we can't) and take over any time the driver isn't attentive for more than a few seconds, I'd bet 99%+ of people would have the wheel taken over at some point on every drive longer than a few minutes. The human mind is not truly able to multitask. If you ever talk to anyone while you're driving, think about any other portion of your day, get distracted by anything you pass, etc., you aren't truly paying attention. It isn't just about where your eyes are pointing.

      I had an accident earlier this year when a grandmother U-turned between barrels in a construction zone right into my path. Pinned by a 2 foot drop off into the torn up road to my right, there was nothing I could do but hit the brakes and let the airbags do their job. As I understood it, she had never had an accident. But her grandson was in the hospital after some emergency. So she was driving while distraught to a hospital she had never been to at night, had taken a wrong turn, and in her hurry to get to her grandson made a bad choice to turn around in the middle of a construction zone. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but two vehicles were totalled.

      During personal emergencies is one of the times that we should always turn the driving over to others. But, we make bad choices in emotional times.

    2. Re:Ok, but your responsibility increases by BitterOak · · Score: 2

      So, no more good food for you then? (cause it's bad for you)

      Not a good analogy. Unhealthy food is potentially bad only for you, not for others around you. Driving a car manually, can increase risks not only to yourself, to the passengers in all the self-driving cars around you.

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      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  3. If he wants to save human driving. . . by quonset · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. Re:If he wants to save human driving. . . by jittles · · Score: 2

      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.

      I would be happy if they forced them to demonstrate the ability to merge onto an interstate, back up in a straight line, parallel park, and other driving skills that 90% of the driving population of the US seems to lack.

  4. Re:Will be as successful as the horse and cart clu by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Funny

    The thing to do is wait until it comes to a complete stop...

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    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  5. So many underlying presumptions by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:So many underlying presumptions by Brett+Buck · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Right. The parent summary is a typical smug fanboi screed mocking anyone who doesn't see it his way. I am virtually certain that he has *no experience whatsoever" about AI or autonomous systems (which have been around a lot longer than the last few years in some fields of endeavor - like maybe 40 years before it became a cause célÃbre - in more life-critical situations that driving on the public roads). If he did, he would know that what he assumed was utter nonsense.

  6. This will sort itself out by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Self driving cars will likely have near zero insurance premiums for the occupants of said vehicle since they are not actually driving it.

    This means the human driven counterpart will see ludicrous insurance requirements to drive it around on public streets.

    The cost alone will prevent all but the 1% from owning a âoe traditional âoe human driven vehicle once self drive becomes mainstream.

    1. Re: This will sort itself out by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Additionally, since the person leading this charge is the CEO of an insurance company, it is likely he already sees the writing on the wall for the car insurance industry as a whole.

    2. Re: This will sort itself out by mapkinase · · Score: 2

      I will never believe that the writer of this piece was able to call a head of insurance company a "sentimental" or "human"

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      I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  7. Driving will be as relevant as horseback riding by sandbagger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    ---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
  8. AI’s fundamentally overrated. by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  9. Re: Ban humans now by WindBourne · · Score: 2

    Yeah, it is not like dot/nhsta have crunched numbers about Tesla and found that they had fewer accidents and more lives saved under car control than under human control. Oh yeah wat. They did and have found that exact situation; Tesla auto pilot is saving lives.

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    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  10. Re:Germany here ... About that ... by quonset · · Score: 2

    Over here, our view is, that: If you can't drive with a stick, ... then you just plain can't drive.

    Funny story. A few years back I was asked to take some German folks to New York City and show them around. When they got into my car the guy in the passenger seat looked down and pointed to the stick shift. He was surprised I had one. I told him and the others in the car, "I'm not a lazy American."

  11. Re: Ban humans now by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Informative

    You day this despite the fact that there is no shred of demonstrable proof that any car has ever driven on its own safer than a human.

    No, apart from all those millions of miles clocked up by self driving cars.

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    No sig today...
  12. Re: Ban humans now by Calydor · · Score: 2

    Well sure, the computers are programmed by people with the time and resources to sit in a calm environment and set parameters for how to handle an emergency. It doesn't matter that those same people would panic and make split-second bad decisions in the actual emergency.

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    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  13. obRush by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

    ... race back to the farm, to dream with my uncle at the fireside ...

  14. Finally, some sanity injected into this debate by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Finally, some sanity injected into this debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But humans on average are already far from 100% capable of operating a vehicle under all conditions, and very often place themselves in situations where they have zero control.

  15. Re:Will be as successful as the horse and cart clu by demonlapin · · Score: 2

    Maybe on some. I drove from Prague to Stuttgart last year, plenty of uncontrolled speed sections, doing about 160, and I passed many more cars than passed me. A few doing about 180, a couple in the 200+ range, but most hanging out around 130-140.