Extracting materials for and creating solar panels: There are some, but it's sort of like worrying about the CO2 release from the concrete used to build a nuclear plant as 'greenhouse gas emissions' for the electricity the nuclear plant produces. Over the life of the panel, said health related issues dwindle to relative insignificance. A solar panel is net healthier for humans than even 'clean' US combustion within the first year.
I'll make my own claim that the hospitals and medical facilities here benefit from their own cheaper energy sources and that has helped keep costs down
Let's assess: First, yes, cheaper power does help keep medical costs down. I'd challenge you to find any source that shows that electricity is a significant expense for said medical facilities. Second, a better way to look at it is balancing slightly cheaper household expenses and services, including medical, from cheaper power up against the extra expenses from the additional medical care.
In the case of coal power, it's often found that the external costs per kWh is actually DOUBLE that of the internal costs. So if you get $50 of electricity from coal, it's actually costing you $150. This translates to you, on average, getting one extra upper respiratory tract infection each year, plus a small chance of lung cancer or other serious illness that can lead to death.
Yes, it's actually cheaper to spend $100 on cleaner electricity in the first place.
All you can do is use the 'best settled science' of the time. In the case of leaded gasoline, it would quickly have grown more expensive than unleaded. End result of a switchover probably about as fast as happened in history, but you wouldn't have had cheap bums like my grandfather using an adapter so he could feed the cheaper leaded gasoline into his unleaded-only car, ruining the catalytic converter in the process.
Basically, if the harm was unknown at the time, oh well. But jack the prices up appropriately NOW.
Just exactly how much do value do you assign to damaging a baby or young child's brain so that you can appropriate tax gasoline for the effect?
Statistics and actuarial tables, of course. The damage is estimated to affect X kids, cost Y amount of extra medical care, Z amount of extra law enforcement, they'll make $A less in their life, etc... Add it all up, figure out about how much damage is caused per gallon, and charge about 110% of that.
Do you think consumers would enjoy it?
Part of the problem is that consumers, people, want their cake and to eat it too. They also tend to be a touch short-sighted. You ask your average consumer about how much they like pollution, and you'll get that they don't. But they'll keep doing polluting activities for various reasons.
Can we ever prove 100% that this was the cause?
Not even courts of law operated on a 100% surety principle. In this case, somewhere between 'probable cause' and 'beyond a reasonable doubt' should be sufficient. We're not talking about proving that factory A caused baby X's disability. We're saying that, statistically speaking, factory A is responsible for a number of baby X's, and it's thus their responsibility to pay for it.
An entity charge would look at those, and recognize that the second one is focused on clean energy and produces only 5% of the emissions that the first one does, and adjust the tax bill so that the first pays 20 times as much additional tax as the second.
Amazingly similar to what I proposed once, though I got jumped on it a bit.
I said that I'd get rid of all the 'thou shalt do' regulations in the EPA, the allowances and grandfathering, etc...
Instead, I'd charge for any pollution. Your power plant emits 1 ton of mercury into the atmosphere a year? That will be $X.
Figure out approximately how much damage X type of pollution in Y type(air, water, ground) causes - environment, medical, death, etc... Multiply by 110% or so to cover the administration costs. Charge the company.
Internalizing an external cost. Is the pollution not really that big of a deal, and cost-ineffective to handle? Pay the tax. Is it a big deal and it is cost-effective to remediate? They do that. Is it a big deal but not cost-effective? Obviously that economic activity is self-destructive to the country and needs to cease.
You slap an icon onto my homescreen for a website I've visited once and have no intentions of visiting again and we're going to have issues...
Start using my cell phone's data plan to download content for offline access when, because it's a cell phone, offline is 'rare', for content that I probably don't care about, again, not good.
Heh, at that point it's no longer an 'ad-blocker' so much as it's an 'annoyance blocker'.
I wonder what the courts would say about that one.
"No, your honor, my plug-in is NOT deliberately targeted at ads. It does just as it's name implies, it blocks annoyances on websites. It also blocks XYZ types of malware, prevents audio and video from automatically playing when the site is opened, those boxes that follow your screen around, and a number of other annoyances, making the browsing experience less of a hassle. It was just that the claimant's having a popup to the center of the screen that invited you to 'punch the monkey' on a site that, for example, was primarily on how to do your own oil changes, was an annoyance.
I disagree with your premise entirely, the browser theme can be responsive to screen size
That's exactly what our responsive design does. if you're viewing it on a wide screen, it does columns and has a nice menu to the side and such.
As the window narrows, it gets rid of the columns, and eventually reworks the menu as a button to maintain as much content visibility as possible.
As a bonus, you don't have to maximize the window, or at least get it over a thousand pixels wide for the site to render correctly. While 1920x1200 monitors are common as heck at my work, people also have a tendency to turn them sideways for various reasons.
I've seen a few sites that won't render correctly on 'cheap' laptops that only have 720p screens.
Consider this, the average one reaches 12 inches, but reach over 18 inches, and ones on the order of 24 inches (and over 60 lbs) are occasionally reported.
Which is why I said 'on average'. This turtle has already gotten 'lucky' once by having humans save him after his shell got scorched, rather than being stored upside down on a ship to be eaten by the crew.
But if every website I visit standardized on a feed scheme, along with a common authentication system and a common reply system, I could see myself installing a single app that worked with all of them.
During your rant, I couldn't help but think, 'But they DO have a standardized app for accessing all the websites', and it's called the browser!
This is interesting because I'm currently working to migrate our content into a 'responsive design' system that is geared to showing unbroken webpages, using the SAME site and code, on everything from fullscreen computers to the smaller phones.
I'll admit, the content might not be as 'perfect' as if it was designed specifically for one or the other on the matching device, but it's pretty good on all of them and doesn't actually take much design work on the part of the individual site creators. Given that they're non-web experts that's a good thing. The point is to present the information, not make it perfectly pretty.
It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.
Oh, how I hate these things! Ad-block doesn't even block them all(because they're often not ads).
1. Download the app! Really? First time here, don't want to mess with that! 2. Like us on X media! I haven't even read one article of yours yet! Have a 1 star because the first thing you did was piss me off! 3. Do you want to sign up for our newsletter? See above, I found you on a random google search for information. NO. 4. Are you willing to review our website? Sure. Part 1: Get rid of the immediate popoup!
First off--White? It'll show all the dirt in a couple of months.
They had to perform the operation first, then have Fred recover from that. Right now they have artists lined up to paint the shell, with the added complexity that any paint used has to be both durable and not harmful to Fred. Remember, reptiles can have weird extreme reactions to chemicals humans tolerate just fine.
They probably 'considered it', piled up a bunch of points as to why it's not a good idea, and mentioned some of them to the writer of the article, who ran with it.
I'm reminded of the 'gear in concrete' art display - a motor turns a gear that leads to 10 50:1 reductions in a row, with the last one being embedded in concrete.
While they certainly do grow, as an adult the question is 'how much'? If there's enough flex involved, there's room for the likely expansion over the rest of his life.
Also, it looks like the shell is printed with separation points that would allow growth, perhaps of shell underneath to replace the plastic.
There are much better choices for this that are more fire resistant and just heat resistant in general. The advantages of PLA are that it's easy to work with, non-toxic, and cheap, but it's not well suited to the harsh conditions of the real world.
*snerk* Nope, Single Family Dwelling, IE House. On a gravel road & driveway even. I even keep the garage clear enough that I part in it most of the time, especially in the winter.
I was talking about shit like at the Mall, Work, etc...
Though my walk has often only been a few car lengths even there, I've also had almost Disney level walks due to various restrictions. For example, parking, then taking a shuttle to the door.
You suffer from a huge misconception here, thinking that insurance with $10 million limit would have to be ten times more per year than one with a $250k limit.
Nope. Go back to point #1, where I said "While each dollar of insurance is cheaper than the one before it, they're still going to be paying 1/10th of what you are." (I dropped 'for the same coverage').
Also, consider that I proposed the insurance cost go from $500/year to $5k/year. A 10X change. While going from $300k to $10M of coverage, a 33X change. Though to be honest, I was thinking of the $100k per person limit, which would make it a 100X change.
Is that enough to convince you that I'm very aware that increasing the top value of insurance is actually relatively cheap?
and what about your example about child support, you want those bureaucratic tyrants at DCF even more power?
If you don't need a license to operate an automatic car, then it's removing power from them. As for my example, I'll toss it back at you: "Same difference". If the government is out for your blood, it's going to get it.
Would you really want the police having remote control over every car? Cops already abuse the powers they do have so there's plenty of precedent.
Again, if the cops want your car stopped, it's going to be stopped. The remote control only makes it cleaner.
The typical model involves boiling a frog by slowly turning up the heat. History has shown us this repeatedly, and today's culture has tolerated massive heating already.
The frog thing is an urban legend. As for the culture heating, well, we've also seen massive pushback happen before. It's happening right now.
So we should all give up autonomy, liberty, and arguably, safety, so those short-sighted fools can play with their phones an extra hour or two a day? If driver's licenses don't filter out enough incompetence then the answer is to fix that.
Fixing driver's licenses would only drive even more to self-driving cars. Self-driving cars can grant MORE autonomy and liberty to those unable to drive themselves. It's almost guaranteed to increase safety.
In the end, it depends on how much of a override that government officials get.
If I become disabled, I'd probably move to be closer to family for that support. If my parents become disabled, they're probably best off staying right where they are.
If you are unable to drive and live in a place where there is no public transportation, then you should sell your nice cozy house, leave your nice cozy town and move to a city where there is adequate public transportation.
See: Massive Expense. Expect to take a 20% haircut on the value of the house you're selling, just to start.
Becoming dependent upon your family is nothing but a choice you (and sometimes your family) make.
It's sometimes the only practical choice. My grandparents live in an area where a car is pretty much necessary to get anywhere. Their resources have dwindled to the point that they're dependent upon Social Security for everything*. Sell their house? They might get a down payment for something in the city for it, nothing more.
*Note: I'm retired and I'm talking about my grandparents. Longevity in our family is to be expected.
If it becomes mainstream, you can bet access to that remote controlled mobility will depend on an ever increasing list of state/institution imposed expectations.
Such as what? Why would the people tolerate it? One could say the same even more for things like driver's licenses, but those remain something of a joke for the skill level required to get one. New drivers are experiencing more limitations, with the intent of them not getting distracted while still mastering(theoretically) the basics, and California and a few other states will yank your license if you're sufficiently behind on your child support(how's that supposed to help?). But other than that it's stable.
Besides, the newest generation doesn't want to drive, as a whole. They want to be able to play on their phones, tablets, and such.
A proper human driver is miles ahead of any computer. If the problem is inattentive driving, then the answer is to fix that, not to encourage more dependence and laziness.
That's attempting to fix human nature though, and that's harder than making millions of self-driving cars.
You see a car two cars in front and one lane to your right.. By the type of car, it's behavior over the last 2 miles, and its condition, you know there's a high probability of erratic or aggressive driving.
And if you're a computer car you don't care because your reaction speed is so much better than it's driver, you assume every driver is probably going to be aggressive and thus drive defensively, and get into 10X or so fewer accidents. Sure, a autodrive + human guide might be better at accident avoidance.
If we can't even guarantee security of our currently networked devices, then it's only a matter of time before these cars are hacked through the wireless mesh. They will be very tempting targets.
I hear about a lot of 'tempting targets' that are never attacked in the wild, but lots of not so 'tempting' targets are also attacked. I agree that the problem needs to be addressed, and very seriously, but I don't think it's insurmountable.
If you are in the car when something like this happens to you, what do you do?
You hit the emergency stop button if it's a computer car. If it's a traditional one, well, you do what you can, but if your father strokes out while he's driving the car while you're in it, it's not designed for somebody else to take over. I'd probably try to turn the engine off via the key.
Well, that is stupid. If they would insure you right now for only maybe $500 a year, and now all of these "safe" autonomous cars are out there, it seems to me your insurance premium would go down.
Indeed, but consider the possibilities - you have self driving cars which get into accidents less than 10% as often as human drivers.
Thing is, insurance requirements are set by legislators.
Consider this chain - 1. In order to get self-driving cars on the road, companies willingly take MUCH more liability onto themselves. Right now, in most states you only need something like $100k per person, $300k per incident coverage. I have $250k per person, $500k per incident. What if they do like Uber and get a $1M policy? $10M? While each dollar of insurance is cheaper than the one before it, they're still going to be paying 1/10th of what you are. 2. It reaches the point that most cars on the road are self driving. You get some farmer's market type incident and it hits the news that those hit are 'screwed' because the driver was insured for 'so little'. Remember, the expectation is that if you're tagged by a self-driving car you're covered up to $1-10M. 3. Legislators increase the minimum insurance requirements for *all* vehicles to match that of autonomous vehicles. Suddenly a $500/year policy isn't enough. It's now $5k. 4. Legislators are also desperate to replace the revenue from traffic fines. Red light cameras and speed cameras are virtually useless, the auto-cars don't run red lights or speed. So they drastically increase the price of any traffic infractions on the remaining drivers, then use information collected from the auto-cars to help charge & prosecute you for any violation, etc....
I'm not saying this is a sure thing, and it really couldn't happen until, like with smoking, there's not enough drivers out there to protect themselves. But given about 40-50 years, I could see self-driven automobiles restricted to tracks.
The average driver is to be considered too incompetent such that they must wait for a 'professional' driver to take remote control of the vehicle when the computer's heuristics inevitably fail?
Here's the problem: Once you introduce true self-driving cars most 'drivers' will stop being drivers. I'm not necessarily talking about the current generation, but what do you expect an 18 year old who got a self-driver for his first vehicle to do? That's worse than a driver who learned on an automatic trying to drive a manual for the first time.
Slashdot Mirror
How is the time between when you have used up the 2 GB quota and the end of the billing month "rare"?
I'm in wifi enough that I don't hit my cap much. But I am hella interested in any application that's sucking down data.
Easy.
Extracting materials for and creating solar panels: There are some, but it's sort of like worrying about the CO2 release from the concrete used to build a nuclear plant as 'greenhouse gas emissions' for the electricity the nuclear plant produces. Over the life of the panel, said health related issues dwindle to relative insignificance. A solar panel is net healthier for humans than even 'clean' US combustion within the first year.
I'll make my own claim that the hospitals and medical facilities here benefit from their own cheaper energy sources and that has helped keep costs down
Let's assess:
First, yes, cheaper power does help keep medical costs down. I'd challenge you to find any source that shows that electricity is a significant expense for said medical facilities.
Second, a better way to look at it is balancing slightly cheaper household expenses and services, including medical, from cheaper power up against the extra expenses from the additional medical care.
In the case of coal power, it's often found that the external costs per kWh is actually DOUBLE that of the internal costs. So if you get $50 of electricity from coal, it's actually costing you $150. This translates to you, on average, getting one extra upper respiratory tract infection each year, plus a small chance of lung cancer or other serious illness that can lead to death.
Yes, it's actually cheaper to spend $100 on cleaner electricity in the first place.
All you can do is use the 'best settled science' of the time. In the case of leaded gasoline, it would quickly have grown more expensive than unleaded. End result of a switchover probably about as fast as happened in history, but you wouldn't have had cheap bums like my grandfather using an adapter so he could feed the cheaper leaded gasoline into his unleaded-only car, ruining the catalytic converter in the process.
Basically, if the harm was unknown at the time, oh well. But jack the prices up appropriately NOW.
Just exactly how much do value do you assign to damaging a baby or young child's brain so that you can appropriate tax gasoline for the effect?
Statistics and actuarial tables, of course. The damage is estimated to affect X kids, cost Y amount of extra medical care, Z amount of extra law enforcement, they'll make $A less in their life, etc... Add it all up, figure out about how much damage is caused per gallon, and charge about 110% of that.
Do you think consumers would enjoy it?
Part of the problem is that consumers, people, want their cake and to eat it too. They also tend to be a touch short-sighted. You ask your average consumer about how much they like pollution, and you'll get that they don't. But they'll keep doing polluting activities for various reasons.
Can we ever prove 100% that this was the cause?
Not even courts of law operated on a 100% surety principle. In this case, somewhere between 'probable cause' and 'beyond a reasonable doubt' should be sufficient. We're not talking about proving that factory A caused baby X's disability. We're saying that, statistically speaking, factory A is responsible for a number of baby X's, and it's thus their responsibility to pay for it.
An entity charge would look at those, and recognize that the second one is focused on clean energy and produces only 5% of the emissions that the first one does, and adjust the tax bill so that the first pays 20 times as much additional tax as the second.
Amazingly similar to what I proposed once, though I got jumped on it a bit.
I said that I'd get rid of all the 'thou shalt do' regulations in the EPA, the allowances and grandfathering, etc...
Instead, I'd charge for any pollution. Your power plant emits 1 ton of mercury into the atmosphere a year? That will be $X.
Figure out approximately how much damage X type of pollution in Y type(air, water, ground) causes - environment, medical, death, etc... Multiply by 110% or so to cover the administration costs. Charge the company.
Internalizing an external cost. Is the pollution not really that big of a deal, and cost-ineffective to handle? Pay the tax. Is it a big deal and it is cost-effective to remediate? They do that. Is it a big deal but not cost-effective? Obviously that economic activity is self-destructive to the country and needs to cease.
You slap an icon onto my homescreen for a website I've visited once and have no intentions of visiting again and we're going to have issues...
Start using my cell phone's data plan to download content for offline access when, because it's a cell phone, offline is 'rare', for content that I probably don't care about, again, not good.
As long as it's optional, I'm fine with it.
And yes, the zoom thing is annoying.
Heh, at that point it's no longer an 'ad-blocker' so much as it's an 'annoyance blocker'.
I wonder what the courts would say about that one.
"No, your honor, my plug-in is NOT deliberately targeted at ads. It does just as it's name implies, it blocks annoyances on websites. It also blocks XYZ types of malware, prevents audio and video from automatically playing when the site is opened, those boxes that follow your screen around, and a number of other annoyances, making the browsing experience less of a hassle. It was just that the claimant's having a popup to the center of the screen that invited you to 'punch the monkey' on a site that, for example, was primarily on how to do your own oil changes, was an annoyance.
I disagree with your premise entirely, the browser theme can be responsive to screen size
That's exactly what our responsive design does. if you're viewing it on a wide screen, it does columns and has a nice menu to the side and such.
As the window narrows, it gets rid of the columns, and eventually reworks the menu as a button to maintain as much content visibility as possible.
As a bonus, you don't have to maximize the window, or at least get it over a thousand pixels wide for the site to render correctly. While 1920x1200 monitors are common as heck at my work, people also have a tendency to turn them sideways for various reasons.
I've seen a few sites that won't render correctly on 'cheap' laptops that only have 720p screens.
The white shell does look odd. If he's to stay in captivity a non-standard paint job might be nice.
Another point - one of the things paint does is protect what's under it. It would increase the longevity of the plastic.
Consider this, the average one reaches 12 inches, but reach over 18 inches, and ones on the order of 24 inches (and over 60 lbs) are occasionally reported.
Which is why I said 'on average'. This turtle has already gotten 'lucky' once by having humans save him after his shell got scorched, rather than being stored upside down on a ship to be eaten by the crew.
But if every website I visit standardized on a feed scheme, along with a common authentication system and a common reply system, I could see myself installing a single app that worked with all of them.
During your rant, I couldn't help but think, 'But they DO have a standardized app for accessing all the websites', and it's called the browser!
This is interesting because I'm currently working to migrate our content into a 'responsive design' system that is geared to showing unbroken webpages, using the SAME site and code, on everything from fullscreen computers to the smaller phones.
I'll admit, the content might not be as 'perfect' as if it was designed specifically for one or the other on the matching device, but it's pretty good on all of them and doesn't actually take much design work on the part of the individual site creators. Given that they're non-web experts that's a good thing. The point is to present the information, not make it perfectly pretty.
It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.
Oh, how I hate these things! Ad-block doesn't even block them all(because they're often not ads).
1. Download the app! Really? First time here, don't want to mess with that!
2. Like us on X media! I haven't even read one article of yours yet! Have a 1 star because the first thing you did was piss me off!
3. Do you want to sign up for our newsletter? See above, I found you on a random google search for information. NO.
4. Are you willing to review our website? Sure. Part 1: Get rid of the immediate popoup!
First off--White? It'll show all the dirt in a couple of months.
They had to perform the operation first, then have Fred recover from that. Right now they have artists lined up to paint the shell, with the added complexity that any paint used has to be both durable and not harmful to Fred. Remember, reptiles can have weird extreme reactions to chemicals humans tolerate just fine.
Think of it as an unstarted canvas.
They probably 'considered it', piled up a bunch of points as to why it's not a good idea, and mentioned some of them to the writer of the article, who ran with it.
I'm reminded of the 'gear in concrete' art display - a motor turns a gear that leads to 10 50:1 reductions in a row, with the last one being embedded in concrete.
While they certainly do grow, as an adult the question is 'how much'? If there's enough flex involved, there's room for the likely expansion over the rest of his life.
Also, it looks like the shell is printed with separation points that would allow growth, perhaps of shell underneath to replace the plastic.
There are much better choices for this that are more fire resistant and just heat resistant in general. The advantages of PLA are that it's easy to work with, non-toxic, and cheap, but it's not well suited to the harsh conditions of the real world.
In short, Fred's likely stuck in a Zoo for now.
I can tell you live in a city (Apartments etc)
*snerk* Nope, Single Family Dwelling, IE House. On a gravel road & driveway even. I even keep the garage clear enough that I part in it most of the time, especially in the winter.
I was talking about shit like at the Mall, Work, etc...
Though my walk has often only been a few car lengths even there, I've also had almost Disney level walks due to various restrictions. For example, parking, then taking a shuttle to the door.
You suffer from a huge misconception here, thinking that insurance with $10 million limit would have to be ten times more per year than one with a $250k limit.
Nope. Go back to point #1, where I said "While each dollar of insurance is cheaper than the one before it, they're still going to be paying 1/10th of what you are." (I dropped 'for the same coverage').
Also, consider that I proposed the insurance cost go from $500/year to $5k/year. A 10X change. While going from $300k to $10M of coverage, a 33X change. Though to be honest, I was thinking of the $100k per person limit, which would make it a 100X change.
Is that enough to convince you that I'm very aware that increasing the top value of insurance is actually relatively cheap?
and what about your example about child support, you want those bureaucratic tyrants at DCF even more power?
If you don't need a license to operate an automatic car, then it's removing power from them. As for my example, I'll toss it back at you: "Same difference". If the government is out for your blood, it's going to get it.
Would you really want the police having remote control over every car? Cops already abuse the powers they do have so there's plenty of precedent.
Again, if the cops want your car stopped, it's going to be stopped. The remote control only makes it cleaner.
The typical model involves boiling a frog by slowly turning up the heat. History has shown us this repeatedly, and today's culture has tolerated massive heating already.
The frog thing is an urban legend. As for the culture heating, well, we've also seen massive pushback happen before. It's happening right now.
So we should all give up autonomy, liberty, and arguably, safety, so those short-sighted fools can play with their phones an extra hour or two a day? If driver's licenses don't filter out enough incompetence then the answer is to fix that.
Fixing driver's licenses would only drive even more to self-driving cars. Self-driving cars can grant MORE autonomy and liberty to those unable to drive themselves. It's almost guaranteed to increase safety.
In the end, it depends on how much of a override that government officials get.
If I become disabled, I'd probably move to be closer to family for that support. If my parents become disabled, they're probably best off staying right where they are.
If you are unable to drive and live in a place where there is no public transportation, then you should sell your nice cozy house, leave your nice cozy town and move to a city where there is adequate public transportation.
See: Massive Expense. Expect to take a 20% haircut on the value of the house you're selling, just to start.
Becoming dependent upon your family is nothing but a choice you (and sometimes your family) make.
It's sometimes the only practical choice. My grandparents live in an area where a car is pretty much necessary to get anywhere. Their resources have dwindled to the point that they're dependent upon Social Security for everything*. Sell their house? They might get a down payment for something in the city for it, nothing more.
*Note: I'm retired and I'm talking about my grandparents. Longevity in our family is to be expected.
If it becomes mainstream, you can bet access to that remote controlled mobility will depend on an ever increasing list of state/institution imposed expectations.
Such as what? Why would the people tolerate it? One could say the same even more for things like driver's licenses, but those remain something of a joke for the skill level required to get one. New drivers are experiencing more limitations, with the intent of them not getting distracted while still mastering(theoretically) the basics, and California and a few other states will yank your license if you're sufficiently behind on your child support(how's that supposed to help?). But other than that it's stable.
Besides, the newest generation doesn't want to drive, as a whole. They want to be able to play on their phones, tablets, and such.
A proper human driver is miles ahead of any computer. If the problem is inattentive driving, then the answer is to fix that, not to encourage more dependence and laziness.
That's attempting to fix human nature though, and that's harder than making millions of self-driving cars.
You see a car two cars in front and one lane to your right.. By the type of car, it's behavior over the last 2 miles, and its condition, you know there's a high probability of erratic or aggressive driving.
And if you're a computer car you don't care because your reaction speed is so much better than it's driver, you assume every driver is probably going to be aggressive and thus drive defensively, and get into 10X or so fewer accidents. Sure, a autodrive + human guide might be better at accident avoidance.
If we can't even guarantee security of our currently networked devices, then it's only a matter of time before these cars are hacked through the wireless mesh. They will be very tempting targets.
I hear about a lot of 'tempting targets' that are never attacked in the wild, but lots of not so 'tempting' targets are also attacked. I agree that the problem needs to be addressed, and very seriously, but I don't think it's insurmountable.
If you are in the car when something like this happens to you, what do you do?
You hit the emergency stop button if it's a computer car. If it's a traditional one, well, you do what you can, but if your father strokes out while he's driving the car while you're in it, it's not designed for somebody else to take over. I'd probably try to turn the engine off via the key.
Well, that is stupid. If they would insure you right now for only maybe $500 a year, and now all of these "safe" autonomous cars are out there, it seems to me your insurance premium would go down.
Indeed, but consider the possibilities - you have self driving cars which get into accidents less than 10% as often as human drivers.
Thing is, insurance requirements are set by legislators.
Consider this chain -
1. In order to get self-driving cars on the road, companies willingly take MUCH more liability onto themselves. Right now, in most states you only need something like $100k per person, $300k per incident coverage. I have $250k per person, $500k per incident. What if they do like Uber and get a $1M policy? $10M? While each dollar of insurance is cheaper than the one before it, they're still going to be paying 1/10th of what you are.
2. It reaches the point that most cars on the road are self driving. You get some farmer's market type incident and it hits the news that those hit are 'screwed' because the driver was insured for 'so little'. Remember, the expectation is that if you're tagged by a self-driving car you're covered up to $1-10M.
3. Legislators increase the minimum insurance requirements for *all* vehicles to match that of autonomous vehicles. Suddenly a $500/year policy isn't enough. It's now $5k.
4. Legislators are also desperate to replace the revenue from traffic fines. Red light cameras and speed cameras are virtually useless, the auto-cars don't run red lights or speed. So they drastically increase the price of any traffic infractions on the remaining drivers, then use information collected from the auto-cars to help charge & prosecute you for any violation, etc....
I'm not saying this is a sure thing, and it really couldn't happen until, like with smoking, there's not enough drivers out there to protect themselves. But given about 40-50 years, I could see self-driven automobiles restricted to tracks.
The average driver is to be considered too incompetent such that they must wait for a 'professional' driver to take remote control of the vehicle when the computer's heuristics inevitably fail?
Here's the problem: Once you introduce true self-driving cars most 'drivers' will stop being drivers. I'm not necessarily talking about the current generation, but what do you expect an 18 year old who got a self-driver for his first vehicle to do? That's worse than a driver who learned on an automatic trying to drive a manual for the first time.