There's lots of problem with the parking brake as an emergency brake. While on some models, yes, they'll lock up the rear tires, on others they won't, and a secondary problem is heating causing brake fade.
As they're not intended for use while driving, they're pretty much all or nothing. You can't apply them partially with an acceptable amount of control.
Thus, my labeling it as a parking brake, not an emergency brake. I've never used it in an emergency, but as a driver of a manual transmission, setting it is part of my parking ritual.
Come back to me when you have *realistic* scenarios.
Indeed. One of the things that was covered in my motorcycle safety class was the concept of 'traction management'.
To keep it simple, depending on the type and condition of the road and your tires, you only have so much traction. It takes traction capability to do anything - speed up, slow down, or turn. It was part of them teaching us that you are not to brake in a turn on a motorcycle. Cars can get away with that, bikes(pushed to limit) can't. You brake, then turn. If you need to stop during a turn, you straighten and brake.
Anyways, to get back to the point - it takes traction to turn. For motorcycles and cars, they covered that it's better to brake than to dodge for any substantial obstacle - if you have the luxury of dodging it, you could have braked to stop hitting it.
So, in the situations mentioned, they're stuck using trains, which have stopping distances that no car maker would be allowed to release a vehicle with. Short of the langoliers being behind you eating everything, braking is pretty much the universal solution.
That way the weight of the car is being supported by the parking brake and not the engine (or something... I'm not a car guy), which would be used as a back up in case the parking brake fails.
Indeed That's the reason I mentioned using the parking brake - on a slope, if you put it in park AND set the brake, you have 2 redundant systems that should stop the car from rolling. If you do the third thing - properly angling your tires, you're either creating a 3rd backup with a curb or at least limiting the damage.
It's the same reason we mirror drives and such - If you have two 99% effective systems that are completely redundant, you reduce the failure rate from 1% to.01%.
I think that people need to be re-trained to actually use the PARKING BRAKE. It's not supposed to be an 'emergency brake' as it'll do jack all if you're at speed.
But if you set it, your car is a whole lot less likely to move.
Once you are embedded with the cheapest vendor, you are locked in forever because the contract never demands open hardware or software and thus once the install is done, the vendor disappears and the sub-par it staff has no clue what to do to make anything work besides just opening the entire thing up.
That and they're buying equipment to be used for 10-20 years, and the computer systems of even 10 years ago were barely planned to be connected to a network, much less the internet.
Meanwhile, the computer systems connected and integrated into such devices are considered medical equipment, and certification was on the basis of 'as installed', IE no patches, no upgrades. It's only in the last few years that the FDA changed this to that in order to remain certified that the computers need to be patched or kept up to date. Add in weird legacy interfaces, and you have a real hassle.
As you say - the vender has to release or at least approve of the patches, and they'd much rather sell you new equipment.
It should be pretty simple: Would it be illegal for an ordinary citizen to do something? If the answer is yes, you need a warrant.
So, if an investigation involves going to somebody's webpage, that doesn't require a warrant. If the investigation involves compromising a computer - brute force password crack, sneaking in and installing a keylogger, utilizing a zero day exploit - you need a warrant.
It is a decision by middle-class people that they could get better, cheaper housing if they pay an additional $2,500 a year in taxes and $2,500 a year in rent to the City than they could if they pay $10,000 a year to a landlord.
False dilemma. Like I said earlier, you adjust the rules so that any landlord trying to charge $10k/year simply won't be able to rent their overpriced real estate because he has competitors.
And you're not really proposing, I think, that the extra $2.5k in taxes would make up the difference in house prices going from $2.5k/year in rent if the 'natural' price is $10k. That would mean that they'd be making up $7.5k from OTHER sources in order to provide that housing. To me that indicates that people like free money, which is 'duh?'.
It's like a decision for single-payer health care. The Canadian and other governments can provide health care for $5,000 a year or less. The free market in private insurance provides health care for $10,000 a year. Why would a consumer choose to spend $10,000 when the people across the border are getting the same thing for $5,000?
Only if the $10k has some unstated benefits - no year long waiting list, better success rate, etc...
Personally, I think that the health care argument is a false one as well - the US healthcare system is a careful combination of the worst aspects of public regulation and private industry. It is far, far, from a free market. Indeed, it's so bad that while I don't consider a single-payer system the greatest 'ideal' for providing healthcare, I feel that it's far better than our current system. It's also probably more easily reached than my solution would be.
They're in great demand. They're not meeting the demand because the government agencies are no longer building public housing to meet the demand. The Republicans in Congress cut off funding with for example the Faircloth Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which forbid federal money for new public housing construction (while they tore down the old public housing). They've got money for war, prisons and the war on drugs but not for housing.
You're surprised that free or subsidized housing is in great demand? You drop the price of steak down to $1/pound from the ~$10/pound it tends to be here and I'd eat a lot more of it!
As for the money for prisons and the war on drugs, that's running out...
A lot of the schools, police stations, post offices, libraries, parks, and other public works that we still use today in New York City were built during the depression by the Works Projects Administration. A well-managed government can do just as well as private industry, and sometimes better.
I have no objections to the government building government buildings.
When have you actually been in public housing in New York City? They were mixed-income housing, mostly middle-class families, particularly civil servants such as police, firemen, teachers, postmen, etc., and other typical middle-class workers such as salesmen, mechanics, restaurant workers, etc. The benefit of mixed-income housing is that the middle-class residents helped the newcomers to find better jobs and get better education. There are special public housing projects like Westbeth for artists.
Middle class people shouldn't need public subsidized housing.
There was a time when the real estate industry wasn't quite so greedy, and even accepted public housing, but now they want to squeeze out every dollar. There's a lot of corruption in local politics, but when we had well-managed city agencies, with strong political watchdog groups, we had good public housing.
You're indicating here that it's a government problem. More government is supposed to fix this? I was thinking more along the lines of clearing out complicated regulations that limit the number of developers in the area. Some new players and the existing ones would have to be more efficient or accept less profit.
I'm looking out my window right now. We're getting plenty of housing built. I see 40-story apartment buildings going up around me. The problem is that apartments rent for $3,000 or more and sell for $1 million or more. In some buidings, half the apartments are empty, owned by absentee landlords in Russia, Qatar or someplace, as investment properties. We just don't have housing that middle-class people can afford.
Well, it sounds like the problems are solving themselves, at least slowly. encourage even more housing - and if you have so many absentee landlords not even bothering to rent places out, I'd consider raising the property taxes on the area.
By which I mean, for example, raise property taxes 100%. Offer a 50% 'homestead' discount for people who it's their primary residence. Use the excess money to fund 'free' public transportation, other perks for the people actually living there.;)
Or raise it and lower the local sales tax, in a sort of opposite approach from tourist areas where they'll raise the sales tax to soak the non-locals more before raising property taxes.
If the non-locals are buying property and leaving it empty without showing up, tax what they're buying more. Soak them.
I know Milton Friedman's solution: move where housing is cheaper, which would be in Western Pennsylvania or Texas. Well, I don't want to move to Western Pennsylvania or Texas. This is my City and I helped build it. I don't see why some billionaire from Qatar or Russia should be able to kick me out and take over.
Then work to be able to afford to live there. That includes voting the corrupt and incompetent out of office - at all levels of government.
most of which have been very successful and have long waiting lists.
Wouldn't 'long waiting lists' mean that they're actually unsuccessful, in that they're not meeting demand? Not to mention that "the projects" have a long history of extreme violent crime rates and other criminal activities?
When you look at the actual numbers, public housing is quite efficient and provides good housing for less cost than developers do in the free market.
You mean, quite efficient at continuing the chain of poverty, because an employer sees an address in the project and looks elsewhere? Sad, but true.
Look, I'm not going to say that public housing is all bad, or that it can't be the most fiscally sound decision. What I am going to say is that I believe that the real way to ensure sufficient housing is to allow developers to make money. If they can make money building housing, they'll build housing. I'm not saying that you have to enable them to make a killing, but well, if you're not getting enough housing built despite sky-high prices, maybe there's a reason that can be adjusted?
People _don't_ unexpectedly enter the road, short of erupting from a shielded location and even then there's usually some sort of warning (like a ball bouncing onto the road - a classic warning that it's time to slow down and prepare for a kid on the road) They telegraph their intentions pretty clearly even if not aware they're doing so.
Your definition of 'unexpectedly' might vary from mine, but I was picturing something like you have people walking down a sidewalk downtown or wherever where there's very little space between traffic and people. Then a person takes a sharp turn and steps into the street, not in a crosswalk. That's 'unexpected'. IE the car should be aware of the possibility, but not stop unless, as you say, there are further signs. Problem being, while humans are fairly good at interpreting body language, I figure that car AI will lag at that.
And yes, if you browse my other posts, I figure that people will quickly take up self-drivers.
Perhaps you mean "where people have the right to unexpectedly enter the road"? Because there are lots of places (in the USA, at least) with much higher speed limits than that, and no barrier - or even strip of grass/trees - between pedestrians and the road.
Define 'much higher'? The areas I've been in where the sidewalk was right up against the road was always 25 mph or less.
As for 'right', well, the goal isn't to only hit pedestrians when they're following the rules, but to avoid hitting them as much as possible. Which means that you have to assume jaywalking, people pushing other people into the street, etc...
I mean, you can get a person at the side of a highway, but they're not supposed to be there, and the 'proper' assumption for safety would be to assume they're going to try to cross.
Certainly, but what happens when you hand over the insurance certificate issued by the manufacturer of the car when the police(or whoever) asks for it? This already happens over in Europe - select companies cover the first 3 years of insurance, liability included, for certain models of car. It can be a real cost saver for new drivers.
There may be some regulations and paperwork to handle, but let's not pretend that Ford, GM, and such couldn't incorporate insurance companies under them.
Okay, this sort of thing was covered in my motorcycle safety class. They went into avoiding stuff a lot more than any of my automobile training.
To be blunt, a car has only so much traction to be used to accelerate, decelerate, or turn. Generally speaking, turning is actually the worst case scenario, traction wise. It takes distance to alter the vector enough to miss something.
In numerous studies it has been found that stopping is pretty much the universal solution, and a self-driving car can do that better than a human, because it eliminates that half a second or so we take to decide to brake. Since it's already breaking when we're still going full speed, it dramatically cuts down on braking distance. Even if the distance necessary to come to a full stop is longer than the obstacle that you're going to hit, IE you're hitting it, remember that E=mv^2, so cutting velocity in half quarters the energy. In short, the slower you hit it, the less energy involved.
Given a sidewalk where people can unexpectedly enter the road, the speed limit should be around 25 mph, and a car can stop very quickly at that low of a velocity - hitting one or more of the 5 who didn't look is unlikely to seriously injure them.
Huh, I thought I mentioned that it'd take 50 years in my post. Oops.
Consider though, at 2%/year of increased sales, even if you start at 10%, you're still looking at 40 years to hit 90%, plus, as you've mentioned, cars are lasting a decade now.
The hard-working minority owner of 3 McDonald's franchises is a 1%er. The top 1% of wage earners earns around over $380K/year. [financialsamurai.com]
...And? As you said, somebody who owns 3 McD franchises is actually working pretty damn hard. More than that, they've probably worked hard for decades to get to that position. Really, he's probably only making that much for a few years.
I never said that 1%ers aren't making a large amount relative to the average. I'm just saying that they're not quite the movers and shakers who are viewed as fucking up the financial markets.
Wow, that's good to know. That means I don't need home insurance either, because I'm not operating the house; I'm just living in it like a resident in a hotel. Clearly the person who built the house will be liable. Oh, wait....
Different types of insurance, and misunderstanding of what 'liability' means.
Now yes, most home insurance policies also covers liability - but that's because you're expected to maintain your property in a safe state, plus it's cheaper to sell you home insurance which covers both the home and liability - much like full coverage car insurance.
When it comes to insuring a self driving car, it can get interesting. Most of the time, liability is the biggest expense, the mandated insurance. Full coverage is only a small amount more. It's the opposite with a home.
Anyways, the idea that you can reduce your car insurance down to theft and accidental damage, perhaps as a rider to a homeowner or renter's policy, while the maker will handle any liability from the car itself causing an accident, and it'll be attractive to lots of people.
If 5% (or less) are self-driving cars, then there will (probably) never be 5% of cars self-driving. Rather than a complicated ramping-up, lets get an average. Say it's 10% of sold cars are self-driving.
How likely is the percentage to be stable? We're unlikely to go from 0% to 5% in a single year.
It'd probably be more like 0% to 0.1% as a single model comes out(equivalent to the Tesla Roadster or something). Then from.1% to.5% as you get a few more models (Model S & Leaf), then it might climb to 1% as laws start acknowledging them. You'll hit 5% once the Judges in DUI cases figure that they're as good or better than breathalyzer modifications to current cars, so they'll start forcing those convicted of drunk driver convictions into them. At the same time, you'll see the soccar-moms forcing their kids into them for 'safety', and like manual transmissions, human driven vehicles will be something only a few will break into. You'll also see at least some elderly getting them because they recognize they're not so good, or because they're forced into it by family, accident, or insurance costs. So after 5%, it'll gradually climb to 10%, at which point I'd expect the percentage to rise a few points every year until they hit 98% or so - with the remaining 2% still being self-driving, but capable of manual control for special purposes.
I'd bet self-driving car makers will be willing to spend tens/hundreds of millions trying to prove the liability isn't theirs. I foresee a lot of lobbying from Google etc to change the law regarding compensation or at least making it the car owner's liability. Victim sues the car owner then car owner is forced into arbitration because of the car software's EULA.
Surprisingly, this is incorrect. They WANT the liability in this case - because their odds of an accident are so much less, they can bake the cost of it into the price of the car, while advertising 'YOU DON'T NEED TO BUY INSURANCE'. That's a powerful advertising tool that's even being used in Europe now by some manufacturers, who cover the insurance costs of certain vehicle for the first 3 years or so.
Between that and single-payer national health care, we could end up with no insurance, but better coverage.
There would still be homeowner's and such.
The real damage will come when the crash rates for self-driving cars are so much less, and the costs of insurance drop. That'll destroy the insurance industry.
Actually, I figure that it'll end up being insurance, more than anything else, that destroys the market for human driven cars once self-driving versions can do everything necessary except maybe off-roading.
1. As part of the negotiations to get self-driving cars on the road without requiring an occupant to have an operator's permit(driver's license), I figure that self-drivers insured by the manufacturer will carry dramatically higher limits. IE here in the USA 100/300* and 250/500 policies are pretty common. But a self driver where the company figures that they're 1% as likely to be in an accident over a normal driver** may insure to $1M, $10M, etc... 2. At some point a sob story about the limit of $100k being reached and being a tragedy for a seriously harmed individual will come up, and how if the injuring party had been a self-driving car, they would have been okay financially. The requirements of human driven cars start rising. So now everybody has to buy a $1M policy of they can't self-insure at that level. 3. This just makes self-driving cars relatively cheaper. So even more people buy them.
That being said, the transition taking 40 years isn't out of sight.
*100k per individual/$300k per incident, or $250k/individual $500k/incident **And I figure that it's the bad drivers who'll get pushed into them first. DUI, new, reckless, etc....
Even if manufactures take out insurances for any problems their cars could cause, it will be much less revenue for the insurer than if he could sell policies for each car at today's tariffs.
Indeed, if the manufacturer provides coverage, they're likely to self-insure to the maximum extent possible. For example, the US Military self-insures it's vehicles. If you're hit by a GOV, Uncle Sam will be the one writing the check. It's substantially cheaper that way than trying to buy insurance for all those vehicles. Individuals need insurance mostly as a risk leveling tool - once you're large enough, it's cheaper to self insure, though many companies will contract some services from an insurance company just for the expertise in things like arguing claim amounts down.
So GM, for example, wouldn't insure each vehicle individually. They'd self-cover for that, and get an umbrella policy that if, say, their AI gets hacked or otherwise goes nuts and causes lots more injury than they anticipated, they're covered. If the expected accident rate is 1% that of human driven vehicles and that's about what the accident rate is, they'll just pay and build that cost into the price of the automobile.
5. The eggs taste much better, especially if they have access to a lot of insects and worms. I use a pitchfork to turn over part of the compost heap so they can get to the wrigglers.
Had fun with an organic person raving about the good taste of their organic, non-caged eggs. I said "Yep, a lot of it's the diet" - They asked me about it. I further informed them: "Occasionally you'll see 'vegetarian fed', you'll want to avoid them. You get the best tasting eggs when the chickens have access to bugs, worms, and such to eat."
I know this took place in Bolivia, but I'm using Venezuela as an example of where officials are willing to cut their own country's throat to save some face.
That's probably a different scale of funding, but BG has $$$ to spare.
True, but Bill Gates has been trying to apply his business principles to his philanthropy. Okay, maybe not the best way to put it, but to put it roughly, he's been trying to utilize his time to determine where putting his money will be the most effective. Basically, he's a venture capitalist donator. Give him a good enough pitch and business plan and get money.
Given the number of positive things I've heard about his donations, I figure that this is one of his rare screwups. Or, more accurately, it's a screwup by one of the charities that Bill Gates decided to give money and a positive statement to.
That being said - considering Venezuela, without doing any research I'd have to ask whether they're simply being prideful.
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There's lots of problem with the parking brake as an emergency brake. While on some models, yes, they'll lock up the rear tires, on others they won't, and a secondary problem is heating causing brake fade.
As they're not intended for use while driving, they're pretty much all or nothing. You can't apply them partially with an acceptable amount of control.
Thus, my labeling it as a parking brake, not an emergency brake. I've never used it in an emergency, but as a driver of a manual transmission, setting it is part of my parking ritual.
Come back to me when you have *realistic* scenarios.
Indeed. One of the things that was covered in my motorcycle safety class was the concept of 'traction management'.
To keep it simple, depending on the type and condition of the road and your tires, you only have so much traction. It takes traction capability to do anything - speed up, slow down, or turn. It was part of them teaching us that you are not to brake in a turn on a motorcycle. Cars can get away with that, bikes(pushed to limit) can't. You brake, then turn. If you need to stop during a turn, you straighten and brake.
Anyways, to get back to the point - it takes traction to turn. For motorcycles and cars, they covered that it's better to brake than to dodge for any substantial obstacle - if you have the luxury of dodging it, you could have braked to stop hitting it.
So, in the situations mentioned, they're stuck using trains, which have stopping distances that no car maker would be allowed to release a vehicle with. Short of the langoliers being behind you eating everything, braking is pretty much the universal solution.
That way the weight of the car is being supported by the parking brake and not the engine (or something... I'm not a car guy), which would be used as a back up in case the parking brake fails.
Indeed That's the reason I mentioned using the parking brake - on a slope, if you put it in park AND set the brake, you have 2 redundant systems that should stop the car from rolling. If you do the third thing - properly angling your tires, you're either creating a 3rd backup with a curb or at least limiting the damage.
It's the same reason we mirror drives and such - If you have two 99% effective systems that are completely redundant, you reduce the failure rate from 1% to .01%.
"slowly" can be a relative term.
I think that people need to be re-trained to actually use the PARKING BRAKE. It's not supposed to be an 'emergency brake' as it'll do jack all if you're at speed.
But if you set it, your car is a whole lot less likely to move.
Once you are embedded with the cheapest vendor, you are locked in forever because the contract never demands open hardware or software and thus once the install is done, the vendor disappears and the sub-par it staff has no clue what to do to make anything work besides just opening the entire thing up.
That and they're buying equipment to be used for 10-20 years, and the computer systems of even 10 years ago were barely planned to be connected to a network, much less the internet.
Meanwhile, the computer systems connected and integrated into such devices are considered medical equipment, and certification was on the basis of 'as installed', IE no patches, no upgrades. It's only in the last few years that the FDA changed this to that in order to remain certified that the computers need to be patched or kept up to date. Add in weird legacy interfaces, and you have a real hassle.
As you say - the vender has to release or at least approve of the patches, and they'd much rather sell you new equipment.
It should be pretty simple: Would it be illegal for an ordinary citizen to do something? If the answer is yes, you need a warrant.
So, if an investigation involves going to somebody's webpage, that doesn't require a warrant. If the investigation involves compromising a computer - brute force password crack, sneaking in and installing a keylogger, utilizing a zero day exploit - you need a warrant.
It is a decision by middle-class people that they could get better, cheaper housing if they pay an additional $2,500 a year in taxes and $2,500 a year in rent to the City than they could if they pay $10,000 a year to a landlord.
False dilemma. Like I said earlier, you adjust the rules so that any landlord trying to charge $10k/year simply won't be able to rent their overpriced real estate because he has competitors.
And you're not really proposing, I think, that the extra $2.5k in taxes would make up the difference in house prices going from $2.5k/year in rent if the 'natural' price is $10k. That would mean that they'd be making up $7.5k from OTHER sources in order to provide that housing. To me that indicates that people like free money, which is 'duh?'.
It's like a decision for single-payer health care. The Canadian and other governments can provide health care for $5,000 a year or less. The free market in private insurance provides health care for $10,000 a year. Why would a consumer choose to spend $10,000 when the people across the border are getting the same thing for $5,000?
Only if the $10k has some unstated benefits - no year long waiting list, better success rate, etc...
Personally, I think that the health care argument is a false one as well - the US healthcare system is a careful combination of the worst aspects of public regulation and private industry. It is far, far, from a free market. Indeed, it's so bad that while I don't consider a single-payer system the greatest 'ideal' for providing healthcare, I feel that it's far better than our current system. It's also probably more easily reached than my solution would be.
They're in great demand. They're not meeting the demand because the government agencies are no longer building public housing to meet the demand. The Republicans in Congress cut off funding with for example the Faircloth Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which forbid federal money for new public housing construction (while they tore down the old public housing). They've got money for war, prisons and the war on drugs but not for housing.
You're surprised that free or subsidized housing is in great demand? You drop the price of steak down to $1/pound from the ~$10/pound it tends to be here and I'd eat a lot more of it!
As for the money for prisons and the war on drugs, that's running out...
A lot of the schools, police stations, post offices, libraries, parks, and other public works that we still use today in New York City were built during the depression by the Works Projects Administration. A well-managed government can do just as well as private industry, and sometimes better.
I have no objections to the government building government buildings.
When have you actually been in public housing in New York City? They were mixed-income housing, mostly middle-class families, particularly civil servants such as police, firemen, teachers, postmen, etc., and other typical middle-class workers such as salesmen, mechanics, restaurant workers, etc. The benefit of mixed-income housing is that the middle-class residents helped the newcomers to find better jobs and get better education. There are special public housing projects like Westbeth for artists.
Middle class people shouldn't need public subsidized housing.
There was a time when the real estate industry wasn't quite so greedy, and even accepted public housing, but now they want to squeeze out every dollar. There's a lot of corruption in local politics, but when we had well-managed city agencies, with strong political watchdog groups, we had good public housing.
You're indicating here that it's a government problem. More government is supposed to fix this? I was thinking more along the lines of clearing out complicated regulations that limit the number of developers in the area. Some new players and the existing ones would have to be more efficient or accept less profit.
I'm looking out my window right now. We're getting plenty of housing built. I see 40-story apartment buildings going up around me. The problem is that apartments rent for $3,000 or more and sell for $1 million or more. In some buidings, half the apartments are empty, owned by absentee landlords in Russia, Qatar or someplace, as investment properties. We just don't have housing that middle-class people can afford.
Well, it sounds like the problems are solving themselves, at least slowly. encourage even more housing - and if you have so many absentee landlords not even bothering to rent places out, I'd consider raising the property taxes on the area.
By which I mean, for example, raise property taxes 100%. Offer a 50% 'homestead' discount for people who it's their primary residence. Use the excess money to fund 'free' public transportation, other perks for the people actually living there. ;)
Or raise it and lower the local sales tax, in a sort of opposite approach from tourist areas where they'll raise the sales tax to soak the non-locals more before raising property taxes.
If the non-locals are buying property and leaving it empty without showing up, tax what they're buying more. Soak them.
I know Milton Friedman's solution: move where housing is cheaper, which would be in Western Pennsylvania or Texas. Well, I don't want to move to Western Pennsylvania or Texas. This is my City and I helped build it. I don't see why some billionaire from Qatar or Russia should be able to kick me out and take over.
Then work to be able to afford to live there. That includes voting the corrupt and incompetent out of office - at all levels of government.
most of which have been very successful and have long waiting lists.
Wouldn't 'long waiting lists' mean that they're actually unsuccessful, in that they're not meeting demand? Not to mention that "the projects" have a long history of extreme violent crime rates and other criminal activities?
When you look at the actual numbers, public housing is quite efficient and provides good housing for less cost than developers do in the free market.
You mean, quite efficient at continuing the chain of poverty, because an employer sees an address in the project and looks elsewhere? Sad, but true.
Look, I'm not going to say that public housing is all bad, or that it can't be the most fiscally sound decision. What I am going to say is that I believe that the real way to ensure sufficient housing is to allow developers to make money. If they can make money building housing, they'll build housing. I'm not saying that you have to enable them to make a killing, but well, if you're not getting enough housing built despite sky-high prices, maybe there's a reason that can be adjusted?
People _don't_ unexpectedly enter the road, short of erupting from a shielded location and even then there's usually some sort of warning (like a ball bouncing onto the road - a classic warning that it's time to slow down and prepare for a kid on the road) They telegraph their intentions pretty clearly even if not aware they're doing so.
Your definition of 'unexpectedly' might vary from mine, but I was picturing something like you have people walking down a sidewalk downtown or wherever where there's very little space between traffic and people. Then a person takes a sharp turn and steps into the street, not in a crosswalk. That's 'unexpected'. IE the car should be aware of the possibility, but not stop unless, as you say, there are further signs. Problem being, while humans are fairly good at interpreting body language, I figure that car AI will lag at that.
And yes, if you browse my other posts, I figure that people will quickly take up self-drivers.
Perhaps you mean "where people have the right to unexpectedly enter the road"? Because there are lots of places (in the USA, at least) with much higher speed limits than that, and no barrier - or even strip of grass/trees - between pedestrians and the road.
Define 'much higher'? The areas I've been in where the sidewalk was right up against the road was always 25 mph or less.
As for 'right', well, the goal isn't to only hit pedestrians when they're following the rules, but to avoid hitting them as much as possible. Which means that you have to assume jaywalking, people pushing other people into the street, etc...
I mean, you can get a person at the side of a highway, but they're not supposed to be there, and the 'proper' assumption for safety would be to assume they're going to try to cross.
Since auto insurance is mandatory,
Certainly, but what happens when you hand over the insurance certificate issued by the manufacturer of the car when the police(or whoever) asks for it? This already happens over in Europe - select companies cover the first 3 years of insurance, liability included, for certain models of car. It can be a real cost saver for new drivers.
There may be some regulations and paperwork to handle, but let's not pretend that Ford, GM, and such couldn't incorporate insurance companies under them.
Okay, this sort of thing was covered in my motorcycle safety class. They went into avoiding stuff a lot more than any of my automobile training.
To be blunt, a car has only so much traction to be used to accelerate, decelerate, or turn. Generally speaking, turning is actually the worst case scenario, traction wise. It takes distance to alter the vector enough to miss something.
In numerous studies it has been found that stopping is pretty much the universal solution, and a self-driving car can do that better than a human, because it eliminates that half a second or so we take to decide to brake. Since it's already breaking when we're still going full speed, it dramatically cuts down on braking distance. Even if the distance necessary to come to a full stop is longer than the obstacle that you're going to hit, IE you're hitting it, remember that E=mv^2, so cutting velocity in half quarters the energy. In short, the slower you hit it, the less energy involved.
Given a sidewalk where people can unexpectedly enter the road, the speed limit should be around 25 mph, and a car can stop very quickly at that low of a velocity - hitting one or more of the 5 who didn't look is unlikely to seriously injure them.
Huh, I thought I mentioned that it'd take 50 years in my post. Oops.
Consider though, at 2%/year of increased sales, even if you start at 10%, you're still looking at 40 years to hit 90%, plus, as you've mentioned, cars are lasting a decade now.
Your household maid robot could be programmed to detect and extinguish fires, and to detect, photograph, and report burglars.
Which, like sprinklers, and home alarms, would reduce your insurance costs, but not eliminate them.
The hard-working minority owner of 3 McDonald's franchises is a 1%er. The top 1% of wage earners earns around over $380K/year. [financialsamurai.com]
...And? As you said, somebody who owns 3 McD franchises is actually working pretty damn hard. More than that, they've probably worked hard for decades to get to that position. Really, he's probably only making that much for a few years.
I never said that 1%ers aren't making a large amount relative to the average. I'm just saying that they're not quite the movers and shakers who are viewed as fucking up the financial markets.
Wow, that's good to know. That means I don't need home insurance either, because I'm not operating the house; I'm just living in it like a resident in a hotel. Clearly the person who built the house will be liable. Oh, wait ....
Different types of insurance, and misunderstanding of what 'liability' means.
Now yes, most home insurance policies also covers liability - but that's because you're expected to maintain your property in a safe state, plus it's cheaper to sell you home insurance which covers both the home and liability - much like full coverage car insurance.
When it comes to insuring a self driving car, it can get interesting. Most of the time, liability is the biggest expense, the mandated insurance. Full coverage is only a small amount more. It's the opposite with a home.
Anyways, the idea that you can reduce your car insurance down to theft and accidental damage, perhaps as a rider to a homeowner or renter's policy, while the maker will handle any liability from the car itself causing an accident, and it'll be attractive to lots of people.
If 5% (or less) are self-driving cars, then there will (probably) never be 5% of cars self-driving. Rather than a complicated ramping-up, lets get an average. Say it's 10% of sold cars are self-driving.
How likely is the percentage to be stable? We're unlikely to go from 0% to 5% in a single year.
It'd probably be more like 0% to 0.1% as a single model comes out(equivalent to the Tesla Roadster or something). Then from .1% to .5% as you get a few more models (Model S & Leaf), then it might climb to 1% as laws start acknowledging them. You'll hit 5% once the Judges in DUI cases figure that they're as good or better than breathalyzer modifications to current cars, so they'll start forcing those convicted of drunk driver convictions into them. At the same time, you'll see the soccar-moms forcing their kids into them for 'safety', and like manual transmissions, human driven vehicles will be something only a few will break into. You'll also see at least some elderly getting them because they recognize they're not so good, or because they're forced into it by family, accident, or insurance costs.
So after 5%, it'll gradually climb to 10%, at which point I'd expect the percentage to rise a few points every year until they hit 98% or so - with the remaining 2% still being self-driving, but capable of manual control for special purposes.
I'd bet self-driving car makers will be willing to spend tens/hundreds of millions trying to prove the liability isn't theirs.
I foresee a lot of lobbying from Google etc to change the law regarding compensation or at least making it the car owner's liability.
Victim sues the car owner then car owner is forced into arbitration because of the car software's EULA.
Surprisingly, this is incorrect. They WANT the liability in this case - because their odds of an accident are so much less, they can bake the cost of it into the price of the car, while advertising 'YOU DON'T NEED TO BUY INSURANCE'. That's a powerful advertising tool that's even being used in Europe now by some manufacturers, who cover the insurance costs of certain vehicle for the first 3 years or so.
Between that and single-payer national health care, we could end up with no insurance, but better coverage.
There would still be homeowner's and such.
The real damage will come when the crash rates for self-driving cars are so much less, and the costs of insurance drop. That'll destroy the insurance industry.
Actually, I figure that it'll end up being insurance, more than anything else, that destroys the market for human driven cars once self-driving versions can do everything necessary except maybe off-roading.
1. As part of the negotiations to get self-driving cars on the road without requiring an occupant to have an operator's permit(driver's license), I figure that self-drivers insured by the manufacturer will carry dramatically higher limits. IE here in the USA 100/300* and 250/500 policies are pretty common. But a self driver where the company figures that they're 1% as likely to be in an accident over a normal driver** may insure to $1M, $10M, etc...
2. At some point a sob story about the limit of $100k being reached and being a tragedy for a seriously harmed individual will come up, and how if the injuring party had been a self-driving car, they would have been okay financially. The requirements of human driven cars start rising. So now everybody has to buy a $1M policy of they can't self-insure at that level.
3. This just makes self-driving cars relatively cheaper. So even more people buy them.
That being said, the transition taking 40 years isn't out of sight.
*100k per individual/$300k per incident, or $250k/individual $500k/incident
**And I figure that it's the bad drivers who'll get pushed into them first. DUI, new, reckless, etc....
Even if manufactures take out insurances for any problems their cars could cause, it will be much less revenue for the insurer than if he could sell policies for each car at today's tariffs.
Indeed, if the manufacturer provides coverage, they're likely to self-insure to the maximum extent possible. For example, the US Military self-insures it's vehicles. If you're hit by a GOV, Uncle Sam will be the one writing the check. It's substantially cheaper that way than trying to buy insurance for all those vehicles. Individuals need insurance mostly as a risk leveling tool - once you're large enough, it's cheaper to self insure, though many companies will contract some services from an insurance company just for the expertise in things like arguing claim amounts down.
So GM, for example, wouldn't insure each vehicle individually. They'd self-cover for that, and get an umbrella policy that if, say, their AI gets hacked or otherwise goes nuts and causes lots more injury than they anticipated, they're covered. If the expected accident rate is 1% that of human driven vehicles and that's about what the accident rate is, they'll just pay and build that cost into the price of the automobile.
5. The eggs taste much better, especially if they have access to a lot of insects and worms. I use a pitchfork to turn over part of the compost heap so they can get to the wrigglers.
Had fun with an organic person raving about the good taste of their organic, non-caged eggs. I said "Yep, a lot of it's the diet" - They asked me about it. I further informed them: "Occasionally you'll see 'vegetarian fed', you'll want to avoid them. You get the best tasting eggs when the chickens have access to bugs, worms, and such to eat."
A bit 'ewe' on her part, but I really don't care.
Oh, because apparently people were confused.
I know this took place in Bolivia, but I'm using Venezuela as an example of where officials are willing to cut their own country's throat to save some face.
That's probably a different scale of funding, but BG has $$$ to spare.
True, but Bill Gates has been trying to apply his business principles to his philanthropy. Okay, maybe not the best way to put it, but to put it roughly, he's been trying to utilize his time to determine where putting his money will be the most effective. Basically, he's a venture capitalist donator. Give him a good enough pitch and business plan and get money.
Given the number of positive things I've heard about his donations, I figure that this is one of his rare screwups. Or, more accurately, it's a screwup by one of the charities that Bill Gates decided to give money and a positive statement to.
That being said - considering Venezuela, without doing any research I'd have to ask whether they're simply being prideful.