"if you try to leave a "recommended" safe distance from the vehicle in front of you, what happens is that the drivers in adjacent lanes see that large gap, and fill it."
They wouldn't if they realised they were risking being ticketed for tailgating, or if better educated. The problem is that most drivers vastly underestimate safe following distances until such time as they find out the hard way.
"Then states can very clearly just say, "you need to allow an X number of seconds 'cushion' in front of you on highways at all times." And you can read that off the meter."
The usual figure is 2 seconds and lots of countries have signs up pointing to this along with "Keep right(or left) unless passing"
Unsurprisingly, these countries have lower crash rates.
"I concentrate far more at 120mph than I do at 60"
You may well do, but those around you are not and being that much faster than the rest of the fleet on the road makes you a crash catalyst.
Similarly, stupidly slow drivers are also a crash catalyst. The issue is the spread of speed between faster and slowest drivers and ideally it should be less than 20mph, preferably less than 10.
It is at least as important to pick off the slow drivers as it is to take out the speeders.
In general freeways in most countries are designed to be safe up to about 100mph. Speed limits below this are fairly arbitrary although fuel consumption starts rising dramatically above about 55mph, which is why the USA had such a low national speed limit for decades following the 1973 oil crisis.
Humans are bloody awful at assessing risk, which is why tailgating is so common and why freeway pileups get very messy very quickly. It's an extremely low risk driving environment and people get complacent.
30-year studies have shown that people drive according to assessed risk. if the posted speed limit is felt to be too high or too low they'll gravitate back to that assessed speed and it's remarkably consistent across drivers. (too high/low: It was found to be if the posted limit was up to 10mph either side of the assessed speed people would stick with it but past that point they'd ignore it and stick with what felt safest.)
The problem is that "road safety measures" generally have the opposite effect to what is intended.
Narrowing lanes: People drive faster. Parking restrictions: People drive faster. More paint on the road: People drive faster pedestrian guide fences: People drive faster traffic islands: people drive faster flush medians: people drive faster Non-controlled pedestrian crossings: people drive faster Light controlled pedestrian crossings: People drive even faster if the lights are green
What actually slowed drivers down was removing as much paint as possible and blurring the distinction between road and footways, or in extreme cases, cobbling the roads.
Case in point: London's Exhibition road https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsit... - although this hasn't worked nearly as well as the media tries to suggest.
Another case: Most of the Netherlands. People talk about the roads being pedestrian and cycyle friendly there but this only started happening since the 1970s. Cars are discouraged from rat-running on residental roads by making them one way, hard to manouever on and cobbled (which makes driving faster a noisy and increasingly scary experience especially when braking.)
People mostly drive badly because they don't want to drive at all. It's a chore, not a joy. In that environment they'll let a robot take over and be happier about the journey (you can do things during the trip rather than having it be X time stolen from your day)
"The primary problem is going to come the first time a driverless car is involved in a serious accident."
The moment the driverless car's video recorders show the human driver doing something boneheaded and illegal which caused the crash, the case will be thrown out of court - EVEN IF ALL THE OTHER HUMANS ARE DOING THE SAME BONEHEADED AND ILLEGAL THING. (caps intentional)
Passing slow/stationary objects on "no passing" lines is already catered to in most road rules (they usually state there must be 100 metres of clear visibility throughout the manouever) and being stuck behind a bicycle on a narrow road is no excuse for forcing your way past in a dangerous manner or crossing the no-passing lines (do that in a lot of countries and get videoed doing so, you can expect to be explaining to a judge exactly why you thought it was a good idea, as the guy who pulled that stunt and nearly crashed into me and 6 other oncoming cars on the other side of the blind bend he did it on found out - 3 month disqualification based on video from the riders and several of the cars which clearly placed him in the driver's seat)
Insurance companies usually work on a "knock for knock" basis - in short they know that in the case of a crash there is normally fault on both sides and normally no evidence other than "he said, she said(*)" so they eat the costs and agree not to claim off each other. When an automaton is shown to be "not at fault", this agreement is going to go out the window, especially when the prevalance of 360-degree video will uphold the issue.
An automaton which stops suddenly to avoid a kid running on the road and gets rear-ended by an inattentive following driver who didn't see the ball roll onto the street previously is in the right (as is a human. The whole point about following distance laws is to ensure the following car CAN stop if the one in stop does so suddenly for no apparent reason). That driver may well take it to court, but he's going to face a triple whammy of being in the wrong under current law (following too closely), picking up the other party's full legal costs when they countersue - because you can guarantee that insurance companies and manufacturers will do so to make examples out of humans clearly in the wrong or trying to make bogus whiplash claims, etc, AND probably finding that no insurance company will take his money afterwards, or if compelled to, insisting on seriously high premiums+deductables as he's demonstrated he's not only a bad driver, he refuses to accept being at-fault.
Just because humans do unsafe things by habit doesn't make it safe. Drunk driving being a case in point.
We've become less and less tolerant of this behaviour as it's become clear how much it really costs not just in direct costs but also all the knock-on expenses. Law enforcement and traffic management experts have been trying to force people to adopt safe following distances for decades, but my suspicion is that it will only start happening when freeway cameras recording roadspeed and following distances start issuing automated tickets (don't laugh, that's exactly what's planned on UK freeways from late 2016 along with 24*7 speed limit enforcement based on video evidence(****) instead of the current "random camera placement and only 90th percentile speeders". Law changes to hold the car owner automatically liable instead of having to positively identify the driver have already been passed.)
Google and Delphi have already tweaked their software such that it will break the speed limit on multilane roads if the surrounding traffic is doing so. That was explicitly mentioned in various articles as far back as 2008.
There is a fair degree of conflation/confusion in these comments of their low-speed electric vehicles (which are hard-limited to 25mph by CA law and mostly operating on 20-25mph roads(**)) and their IC-engine machines which have a lot more processing power and run at higher speeds.
(*) In car video evidence is mostly useless for crash evidence as it shows only a
"Undertaking is illegal e.g. in the UK for a reason."
Contrary to popular belief, "undertaking" is not illegal in the UK.
It's _strongly_ discouraged and should be done with extreme caution. If you have any kind of crunch, bump or have the guy you're "undertaking" turn in on you as you pass, you _will_ be charged with careless driving, but undertaking itself isn't illegal (in fact, passing a lane hogger is accepted as a valid reason for doing it).
Unfortunately in the UK, the laws against being in the faster ("inner") lanes when not overtaking can only be enforced 1: By a cop and 2: when they've been observing for at least a few minutes to determine the culprit is a moving road hazard. the result is that the laws have made virtually no discernable difference to the prevalance of boneheaded selfish driving (invariably perpetrated by the "old men wearing hats" brigade).
Video evidence from 3rd parties(*), or police-operated road monitoring cameras isn't enough to file charges. The police have to apprehend the driver and physically ticket them, which is a traffic hazard in itself on a freeway and it feels like you're more likely to be hit by lightning than to see a cop writing a ticket for this behavour (only a few hundred tickets have ever been issued nationwide, whilst I see the behaviour 20-30 times per _hour_ on british freeways around London alone)
(*) If the video footage shows the driver actively preventing people trying to pass by changing lanes, that's a different matter and will result in dangerous driving charges.
"If the data is important enough to have a firewall there,"
Then the ACLs are baked into the database and the only way they get disabled without taking the database down, is "deliberately".
I do enough DBA work to have to deal with this shit. A professional DBA will add the ACLs in the initial design without even thinking about it.
Then again I also see enough "databases" run by large outfits which are unstructured, non-secured and incompetently controlled by narcissists who won't take security advice until they've been reamed out a few times by data privacy laws.
"Pure canvassing and ground game, the most important part."
This is more important than anything else. Even knocking on a diehard republican supporter's door is going to make an impression - and of course you can impress on the "I don't vote, it doesn't make any difference" crowd that the reason they have the political elite they've got is _because_ they don't vote.
> 1. Around 2/3 of the country have landline phones.
How many actually use them? A substantial number of people have them for their DSL circuit (it is cheaper to take voice service than not to take it) but don't even bother plugging one in.
> 2. Polls take non-landline owners into account. Typically, around 1/3 of respondents for most polls are on cellphones.
Citiation please.
The only _legal_ way for a polling organisation to make contact with a mobile phone owner is to have the mobile initiate the contact or explicitly invite the call. Either way you're into the realms of "self-selecting samples" and the distortions that come with them.
Background: Because the USA historically runs a "receiver pays" model for mobile phones, it is flat out _illegal_ to make unsolicited calls of any kind to USA cellular phones along with several classes of landline telephone (including at least: phone booths, phones operated by emergency services, phones in prisons, military landlines and phones in hospitals)
There are exemptions in the DNC and TCPA laws to private landline phones for unsolicited political/religious/charity calling, but they are dogged tightly shut if the destination number is a mobile or any of the prohibited landline classes, with 6-figure fines applicable if caught (per call - and once investigations start, they invariably find more than one call). As a result in the USA, the fastest way to get any unsolicited caller off the line is to say "This is a cell phone".
"I will cast my vote for the candidate who most represents me"
THIS in spades.
If you don't vote, you don't count.
If you do vote, even for the Monster Raving Loony Silly party(*), you're making a statement that you care enough about the political process for politicians to care about you.
(I've always wondered what would happen if someone was to establish a "No Confidence In Any Candidate" party.)
(*) I'm using them as a specific example - the fact that the Silly party outpolled the british "national front" (right wing neofascists) was the deciding factor in the NF disbanding. Despite neither group having a hope of gaining actual political power, it marked the end of the NF (and subsequent neofascists auch as the BNP, etc) having any aspirations of any kind of political influence.
"I would rather see Sanders run as an independent in the general election"
If he does he will split the democratic vote and hand the election to the republicans. Likewise if Trump runs as independent. That would hand the election to the Democrats.
The DNC and RNC cannot afford to allow the possibility of these guys being independent candidates. If that happens it will be the death knell of the tenure of those currently at the controls.
Trump is narcissistic enough to switch to an independent ticket in a heartbeat. Sanders is unlikely to (although he should).
The reality is that _all_ political parties have "use by" dates and need to be forcibly dismantled past that point because they end up serving the interests of the party elite, rather than the party membership. Usually once the members realise and shift their votes/alliegance it's long past that point.
ObHumor: "Trump" is northern british slang for a loud & wet fart, which from this side of the Atlantic is about right for his political input. ObHistory: http://www.snopes.com/1998-tru...
"Trump is at least as unelectable as Bernie. He has about 30% of the Republican party "
The Conservative party won in the UK with 34% of the vote (labour won previous elections with about the same and got 33% of the vote this time)
Jeremy Corbyn has the support of 60+% of his party's _members_, but the MPs who are supposed to be beholden to the membership are openly plotting a coup against him as the policies he espouses are not in their personal political interest.
What the "party elite" may want is clearly not what the voters or the party supporters want - and at individual electorate level it is extremely hard to remove them as the "elite" have total control on who can actually vote on which person goes up as the MP candidate.
"lock the future of our nation down in higher taxes..."
Your country (the USA) is taxing the lower echelons at unbelievably (and historically, and unsustainably) high levels, whilst taxing the rich at peppercorn rates if at all and continuing to spend on military projects at higher GDP rates than the ones which bankrupted the Soviet Union (at cost of education and essential civil engineering expenditure)
The F35 may have a gathering reputation as the weapon which ate the Pentagon but it's merely the tip of the iceberg. The USA has more military expenditure than the next dozen countries _combined_ and more than the following 150 or so combined too.
That military expenditure has been used primarily to "secure energy resources" in such a way that it's alienated/destabilised large parts of the rest of the world and action to "solve those problems" has merely compounded the issue. Ironically it's that very military expenditure which has toppled the USA from being the "top country" in the world on a number of fronts (not least being "the largest economy" - it hasn't been for a long time and whilst China is now bigger, the EU has been bigger for over 20 years).
The military mindset is so interwoven into the USA political castes, along with money-worship and frankly sociopathic internal policies that those in control can't even fathom the levels of resentment which are gathering at lower levels (It's been said that the USA is actually at least a dozen distinct countries superimposed on top of each other, which mostly don't interact even within city borders).
You're set for a socio-economic implosion and it's unlikely to be pretty or confined to being within USA borders. The rest of the world watches on and wishes that it won't spill over too much.
"Solar and wind have manufacturing processes that require mining of rare earths or chemical processes that aren't the most environmentally friendly, and they have to deal with that"
Actually, they don't. The environmental pollution associated with solar PV production has to be seen (and smelled) to be believed - and the really scary part is that (like gold mine dams), if it leaks from where it's currently (mostly) contained, it has the possibility of sterilizing watersheds right down to the sea.
WRT rare earth production the single biggest problem is Thorium and the issues associated with preventing that being made use of in a widespread manner are political, not technical (yes, it's radioactive (barely), but it's not a chemical toxin and we have to get past the "manmade radiation baaaaad, natural radiation gooood" Animal Farm mindset)
Sanders may be decried (or lauded) as a socialist in the USA and he may be the left-most politician in the race, but the scary reality to the rest of the world is that he's centre-right and the rest simply go more right wing from there.
Forget "religion", that's primarily a cold-war hangover (fighting the godless communists) which is primarily used as a tool of thought control.
Democrats and Republicans alike have historically tended towards centrist policies, with differing (often alternatiing) attitudes towards statism and corporatisim (both of which are in the ascendant no matter who's supposedly been at the helm since 1939) This steady lurch to the right since the late 1970s is an abberation which will eventually correct, both in the USA and in the UK (which has followed similar trajectories along the same period)
Oligarchies, repressive corporatism, repressive statism and religiously(*) motivated conflicts (sectarian and interfaith) are within living memories across the globe. Most of those who have experienced them don't want repeats, yet the USA seems determined to make them all happen again - and this time it may actually happen within its own borders instead of by proxy.
(*) Religion in such cases is merely used as a political tool to whip up followers or oppress opponents.
I've had two write off crashes and put a 4wd in a ditch at 40mph once.
The 2 former cases were the result of unlicensed drivers doing something boneheadly stupid (panic stop on a freeway onramp intending to reverse back up and go to the other onramp(yes really), and driving from a sidestreet through cars in stopped traffic lanes on one side of the road onto the other side of the road which was free-running, then stopping whilst across 2 lanes - effectively an instant roadblock.) and me not being alert enough to react in time (a large part of it was the "what the f !?!??" factor, where an automaton would have been on the brakes immediately). The latter case was passing under pressure on a narrow rural and putting wheels on the grassy verge on the other side of the road - definitely my fault.
I like driving - when I'm driving by choice.
However, 99% of the driving I do is simply a necessity of getting from A to B and that's the kind of stuff where my attention isn't wholly on the road and what might appear on the road. This is the same for almost everyone. There are very few drivers who are paying 100% attention 100% of the time. The number of crashes is less than 1% of the number of "almost crashes" and that's a major problem, as is the number of drivers who will say "what hazard?" after they've gone past it - it simply didn't even register.
The driving force behind rapid automatisation of the road fleet will be insurance companies. The single largest class of insurance claim (class, not cost) is "reversed into another car in a parking lot/whilst parking" and they'll be extremely happy to eliminate those as they're more trouble then they're worth.
Posters here are pissing and moaning about how they won't let a robot take over. The reality is that most drivers will be throwing money at car companies to let them, and then in 10-20 years or less, not bothering because they can just hail a johnnycab for a total operational cost far less than having your own vehicle. Yes, XYZ previous passenger may make a mess of the vehicle and yes someone might crash into the thing, then claim it was the robot's fault, but onboard external and _internal_ video surveillance will make most cases open and shut (most hire vehicles already have onboard internal cameras. Many drivers already use external-facing cameras. This isn't new technology)
Almost all professional driving is on the same stretches of predicatable roads and "professional" drivers are amongst the worst offenders for dumbass manoeuvers on the road due to laziness, bad habits acquired over years of "getting away with it" and a general tendency in the field to not be the sharpest pencils in the box. This also has a lot to do with "professional drivers" tending to be those who are unemployable in most other fields due to lack of trainability and/or inability to acquire skills (aka: "Village idiot syndrome"(**)). Driving isn't difficult. Driving well isn't difficult. Driving consistently well is something altogether harder.
A human "supervisor" I can see being a requirement for a few years as a sop to various naysayers - Docklands Light Railway being one example where the "supervisor" often pretends to drive (which is amusing when you know it's the PDP11 microvax(*) running VMS under the cabin doing all the work) when their sole purpose for existence is to ensure no passengers have been caught in the doors (even door opening/closing is automated, they have an override to open in such cases and they get seriously offended when you openly laugh at them pretending to drive - even more so when you inform other passengers why you're laughing).
It is entirely possible that where an autonomous vehicle can't cope, manual driving will only be allowed at walking speed unless the operator has an advanced competency license - and quite frankly the quality of most manual driving is already terrible, so an automaton doesn't have a very high bar to reach in order to be better. It's likely that within a decade of such a change, human supervision will be found to be the cause of more costly incidents than either simply stopping or calling in external skilled assistance (like OnStar but actually useful).
(*) Yes really. The controllers in those trains genuinely are that old. The units are the last generation 4U high ones from around 1987.
(**) Put simply: The Village Idiot is a nice kid who can pitch hay with the rest of the yokels and happily run a wagon to/from the grain silo, but would you let him near the controls of your $2,500,000 John Deere combine harvester, expect him to run your accounts or even pay attention to the water and oil levels in his own car even when the idiot lights are flashing?
We've gone from strong bodyshells to weak to "strong in places".
5th gear in the UK ran some interesting crash tests comparing structural rigidity of things like older and newer model Renault Espace.
The newer model deformed and crushed in precise zones, protecting the occupants whilst avoiding damaging deceleration. The older one folded up like a drinks can, offering little protection to the front seat occupants.
"Coating technology fails around seams and welds, where it is very difficult to apply"
Firstly: The coating is generally applied before sheets are pressed (Audi was the first to use galvanised steel, now everyone does it)
Secondly: Electrolytic dunking of the completed bodyshell ensures that every part ends up with protection.
Your Mazda might rust but that's primarily down to the assembly line practices, not the technology.
JDM cars have none of these technologies in the build process as they're designed for a 4-year lifespan and rust literally doesn't matter, whilst the same model built in the UK (or in Japan for export) will have extensive corrosion treatment applied and last 8-15 years before rust starts being an issue.
"It's my understanding that the figure includes *all* of the earth's gold, whether currently accessible or not."
The real amount of crustal gold is unknown but that number is about right for "everything mined ever" whilst the estimated amount in the crust is about 20 times higher (just too expensive to extract)
The interesting thing is that more volume of gold is traded each year than is supposed to physically exist, which means some is whizzing around a lot or some gold reserves are actually bogus
That segues nicely into the factoid that a lot of countries are currently pissed off at the USA for refusing to return their gold reserves (much of what is in the Federal Reserve belongs to other countries) and there have been rumours circulating for the last decade that the reason the USA isn't returning it, is because they don't have it to return, having lent it out to 3rd parties as "US gold" - (ie, theft by conversion of ownership). Nooone wants to test that theory too much because if proven it would really be the end of confidence in various physical currencies.
Slashdot Mirror
"if you try to leave a "recommended" safe distance from the vehicle in front of you, what happens is that the drivers in adjacent lanes see that large gap, and fill it."
They wouldn't if they realised they were risking being ticketed for tailgating, or if better educated. The problem is that most drivers vastly underestimate safe following distances until such time as they find out the hard way.
"Then states can very clearly just say, "you need to allow an X number of seconds 'cushion' in front of you on highways at all times." And you can read that off the meter."
The usual figure is 2 seconds and lots of countries have signs up pointing to this along with "Keep right(or left) unless passing"
Unsurprisingly, these countries have lower crash rates.
"I concentrate far more at 120mph than I do at 60"
You may well do, but those around you are not and being that much faster than the rest of the fleet on the road makes you a crash catalyst.
Similarly, stupidly slow drivers are also a crash catalyst. The issue is the spread of speed between faster and slowest drivers and ideally it should be less than 20mph, preferably less than 10.
It is at least as important to pick off the slow drivers as it is to take out the speeders.
"people tend to drive as fast as the road and their skill level allows for."
People drive _well_ beyond their skill levels. They only find this out when they run out of road.
More cops _on the roads_ would make the roads safer, full stop.
Assuming they're doing what they should be doing. Roscoe P. Coltrane and his ilk need not apply.
In general freeways in most countries are designed to be safe up to about 100mph. Speed limits below this are fairly arbitrary although fuel consumption starts rising dramatically above about 55mph, which is why the USA had such a low national speed limit for decades following the 1973 oil crisis.
Humans are bloody awful at assessing risk, which is why tailgating is so common and why freeway pileups get very messy very quickly. It's an extremely low risk driving environment and people get complacent.
30-year studies have shown that people drive according to assessed risk. if the posted speed limit is felt to be too high or too low they'll gravitate back to that assessed speed and it's remarkably consistent across drivers. (too high/low: It was found to be if the posted limit was up to 10mph either side of the assessed speed people would stick with it but past that point they'd ignore it and stick with what felt safest.)
The problem is that "road safety measures" generally have the opposite effect to what is intended.
Narrowing lanes: People drive faster.
Parking restrictions: People drive faster.
More paint on the road: People drive faster
pedestrian guide fences: People drive faster
traffic islands: people drive faster
flush medians: people drive faster
Non-controlled pedestrian crossings: people drive faster
Light controlled pedestrian crossings: People drive even faster if the lights are green
What actually slowed drivers down was removing as much paint as possible and blurring the distinction between road and footways, or in extreme cases, cobbling the roads.
Case in point: London's Exhibition road https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsit... - although this hasn't worked nearly as well as the media tries to suggest.
Another case: Most of the Netherlands. People talk about the roads being pedestrian and cycyle friendly there but this only started happening since the 1970s. Cars are discouraged from rat-running on residental roads by making them one way, hard to manouever on and cobbled (which makes driving faster a noisy and increasingly scary experience especially when braking.)
People mostly drive badly because they don't want to drive at all. It's a chore, not a joy. In that environment they'll let a robot take over and be happier about the journey (you can do things during the trip rather than having it be X time stolen from your day)
"The primary problem is going to come the first time a driverless car is involved in a serious accident."
The moment the driverless car's video recorders show the human driver doing something boneheaded and illegal which caused the crash, the case will be thrown out of court - EVEN IF ALL THE OTHER HUMANS ARE DOING THE SAME BONEHEADED AND ILLEGAL THING. (caps intentional)
Passing slow/stationary objects on "no passing" lines is already catered to in most road rules (they usually state there must be 100 metres of clear visibility throughout the manouever) and being stuck behind a bicycle on a narrow road is no excuse for forcing your way past in a dangerous manner or crossing the no-passing lines (do that in a lot of countries and get videoed doing so, you can expect to be explaining to a judge exactly why you thought it was a good idea, as the guy who pulled that stunt and nearly crashed into me and 6 other oncoming cars on the other side of the blind bend he did it on found out - 3 month disqualification based on video from the riders and several of the cars which clearly placed him in the driver's seat)
Insurance companies usually work on a "knock for knock" basis - in short they know that in the case of a crash there is normally fault on both sides and normally no evidence other than "he said, she said(*)" so they eat the costs and agree not to claim off each other. When an automaton is shown to be "not at fault", this agreement is going to go out the window, especially when the prevalance of 360-degree video will uphold the issue.
An automaton which stops suddenly to avoid a kid running on the road and gets rear-ended by an inattentive following driver who didn't see the ball roll onto the street previously is in the right (as is a human. The whole point about following distance laws is to ensure the following car CAN stop if the one in stop does so suddenly for no apparent reason). That driver may well take it to court, but he's going to face a triple whammy of being in the wrong under current law (following too closely), picking up the other party's full legal costs when they countersue - because you can guarantee that insurance companies and manufacturers will do so to make examples out of humans clearly in the wrong or trying to make bogus whiplash claims, etc, AND probably finding that no insurance company will take his money afterwards, or if compelled to, insisting on seriously high premiums+deductables as he's demonstrated he's not only a bad driver, he refuses to accept being at-fault.
Just because humans do unsafe things by habit doesn't make it safe. Drunk driving being a case in point.
We've become less and less tolerant of this behaviour as it's become clear how much it really costs not just in direct costs but also all the knock-on expenses. Law enforcement and traffic management experts have been trying to force people to adopt safe following distances for decades, but my suspicion is that it will only start happening when freeway cameras recording roadspeed and following distances start issuing automated tickets (don't laugh, that's exactly what's planned on UK freeways from late 2016 along with 24*7 speed limit enforcement based on video evidence(****) instead of the current "random camera placement and only 90th percentile speeders". Law changes to hold the car owner automatically liable instead of having to positively identify the driver have already been passed.)
Google and Delphi have already tweaked their software such that it will break the speed limit on multilane roads if the surrounding traffic is doing so. That was explicitly mentioned in various articles as far back as 2008.
There is a fair degree of conflation/confusion in these comments of their low-speed electric vehicles (which are hard-limited to 25mph by CA law and mostly operating on 20-25mph roads(**)) and their IC-engine machines which have a lot more processing power and run at higher speeds.
(*) In car video evidence is mostly useless for crash evidence as it shows only a
"Undertaking is illegal e.g. in the UK for a reason."
Contrary to popular belief, "undertaking" is not illegal in the UK.
It's _strongly_ discouraged and should be done with extreme caution. If you have any kind of crunch, bump or have the guy you're "undertaking" turn in on you as you pass, you _will_ be charged with careless driving, but undertaking itself isn't illegal (in fact, passing a lane hogger is accepted as a valid reason for doing it).
Unfortunately in the UK, the laws against being in the faster ("inner") lanes when not overtaking can only be enforced 1: By a cop and 2: when they've been observing for at least a few minutes to determine the culprit is a moving road hazard. the result is that the laws have made virtually no discernable difference to the prevalance of boneheaded selfish driving (invariably perpetrated by the "old men wearing hats" brigade).
Video evidence from 3rd parties(*), or police-operated road monitoring cameras isn't enough to file charges. The police have to apprehend the driver and physically ticket them, which is a traffic hazard in itself on a freeway and it feels like you're more likely to be hit by lightning than to see a cop writing a ticket for this behavour (only a few hundred tickets have ever been issued nationwide, whilst I see the behaviour 20-30 times per _hour_ on british freeways around London alone)
(*) If the video footage shows the driver actively preventing people trying to pass by changing lanes, that's a different matter and will result in dangerous driving charges.
"If the data is important enough to have a firewall there,"
Then the ACLs are baked into the database and the only way they get disabled without taking the database down, is "deliberately".
I do enough DBA work to have to deal with this shit. A professional DBA will add the ACLs in the initial design without even thinking about it.
Then again I also see enough "databases" run by large outfits which are unstructured, non-secured and incompetently controlled by narcissists who won't take security advice until they've been reamed out a few times by data privacy laws.
"Pure canvassing and ground game, the most important part."
This is more important than anything else. Even knocking on a diehard republican supporter's door is going to make an impression - and of course you can impress on the "I don't vote, it doesn't make any difference" crowd that the reason they have the political elite they've got is _because_ they don't vote.
> 1. Around 2/3 of the country have landline phones.
How many actually use them? A substantial number of people have them for their DSL circuit (it is cheaper to take voice service than not to take it) but don't even bother plugging one in.
> 2. Polls take non-landline owners into account. Typically, around 1/3 of respondents for most polls are on cellphones.
Citiation please.
The only _legal_ way for a polling organisation to make contact with a mobile phone owner is to have the mobile initiate the contact or explicitly invite the call. Either way you're into the realms of "self-selecting samples" and the distortions that come with them.
Background: Because the USA historically runs a "receiver pays" model for mobile phones, it is flat out _illegal_ to make unsolicited calls of any kind to USA cellular phones along with several classes of landline telephone (including at least: phone booths, phones operated by emergency services, phones in prisons, military landlines and phones in hospitals)
There are exemptions in the DNC and TCPA laws to private landline phones for unsolicited political/religious/charity calling, but they are dogged tightly shut if the destination number is a mobile or any of the prohibited landline classes, with 6-figure fines applicable if caught (per call - and once investigations start, they invariably find more than one call). As a result in the USA, the fastest way to get any unsolicited caller off the line is to say "This is a cell phone".
"I will cast my vote for the candidate who most represents me"
THIS in spades.
If you don't vote, you don't count.
If you do vote, even for the Monster Raving Loony Silly party(*), you're making a statement that you care enough about the political process for politicians to care about you.
(I've always wondered what would happen if someone was to establish a "No Confidence In Any Candidate" party.)
(*) I'm using them as a specific example - the fact that the Silly party outpolled the british "national front" (right wing neofascists) was the deciding factor in the NF disbanding. Despite neither group having a hope of gaining actual political power, it marked the end of the NF (and subsequent neofascists auch as the BNP, etc) having any aspirations of any kind of political influence.
"I would rather see Sanders run as an independent in the general election"
If he does he will split the democratic vote and hand the election to the republicans.
Likewise if Trump runs as independent. That would hand the election to the Democrats.
The DNC and RNC cannot afford to allow the possibility of these guys being independent candidates. If that happens it will be the death knell of the tenure of those currently at the controls.
Trump is narcissistic enough to switch to an independent ticket in a heartbeat. Sanders is unlikely to (although he should).
The reality is that _all_ political parties have "use by" dates and need to be forcibly dismantled past that point because they end up serving the interests of the party elite, rather than the party membership. Usually once the members realise and shift their votes/alliegance it's long past that point.
ObHumor: "Trump" is northern british slang for a loud & wet fart, which from this side of the Atlantic is about right for his political input.
ObHistory: http://www.snopes.com/1998-tru...
"Trump is at least as unelectable as Bernie. He has about 30% of the Republican party "
The Conservative party won in the UK with 34% of the vote (labour won previous elections with about the same and got 33% of the vote this time)
Jeremy Corbyn has the support of 60+% of his party's _members_, but the MPs who are supposed to be beholden to the membership are openly plotting a coup against him as the policies he espouses are not in their personal political interest.
What the "party elite" may want is clearly not what the voters or the party supporters want - and at individual electorate level it is extremely hard to remove them as the "elite" have total control on who can actually vote on which person goes up as the MP candidate.
"lock the future of our nation down in higher taxes..."
Your country (the USA) is taxing the lower echelons at unbelievably (and historically, and unsustainably) high levels, whilst taxing the rich at peppercorn rates if at all and continuing to spend on military projects at higher GDP rates than the ones which bankrupted the Soviet Union (at cost of education and essential civil engineering expenditure)
The F35 may have a gathering reputation as the weapon which ate the Pentagon but it's merely the tip of the iceberg. The USA has more military expenditure than the next dozen countries _combined_ and more than the following 150 or so combined too.
That military expenditure has been used primarily to "secure energy resources" in such a way that it's alienated/destabilised large parts of the rest of the world and action to "solve those problems" has merely compounded the issue. Ironically it's that very military expenditure which has toppled the USA from being the "top country" in the world on a number of fronts (not least being "the largest economy" - it hasn't been for a long time and whilst China is now bigger, the EU has been bigger for over 20 years).
The military mindset is so interwoven into the USA political castes, along with money-worship and frankly sociopathic internal policies that those in control can't even fathom the levels of resentment which are gathering at lower levels (It's been said that the USA is actually at least a dozen distinct countries superimposed on top of each other, which mostly don't interact even within city borders).
You're set for a socio-economic implosion and it's unlikely to be pretty or confined to being within USA borders. The rest of the world watches on and wishes that it won't spill over too much.
"Solar and wind have manufacturing processes that require mining of rare earths or chemical processes that aren't the most environmentally friendly, and they have to deal with that"
Actually, they don't. The environmental pollution associated with solar PV production has to be seen (and smelled) to be believed - and the really scary part is that (like gold mine dams), if it leaks from where it's currently (mostly) contained, it has the possibility of sterilizing watersheds right down to the sea.
WRT rare earth production the single biggest problem is Thorium and the issues associated with preventing that being made use of in a widespread manner are political, not technical (yes, it's radioactive (barely), but it's not a chemical toxin and we have to get past the "manmade radiation baaaaad, natural radiation gooood" Animal Farm mindset)
Not forgetting that in the 1960s an outgoing president specifically warned against letting the military tail wag the national dog.
Sanders may be decried (or lauded) as a socialist in the USA and he may be the left-most politician in the race, but the scary reality to the rest of the world is that he's centre-right and the rest simply go more right wing from there.
Forget "religion", that's primarily a cold-war hangover (fighting the godless communists) which is primarily used as a tool of thought control.
Democrats and Republicans alike have historically tended towards centrist policies, with differing (often alternatiing) attitudes towards statism and corporatisim (both of which are in the ascendant no matter who's supposedly been at the helm since 1939) This steady lurch to the right since the late 1970s is an abberation which will eventually correct, both in the USA and in the UK (which has followed similar trajectories along the same period)
Oligarchies, repressive corporatism, repressive statism and religiously(*) motivated conflicts (sectarian and interfaith) are within living memories across the globe. Most of those who have experienced them don't want repeats, yet the USA seems determined to make them all happen again - and this time it may actually happen within its own borders instead of by proxy.
(*) Religion in such cases is merely used as a political tool to whip up followers or oppress opponents.
I've had two write off crashes and put a 4wd in a ditch at 40mph once.
The 2 former cases were the result of unlicensed drivers doing something boneheadly stupid (panic stop on a freeway onramp intending to reverse back up and go to the other onramp(yes really), and driving from a sidestreet through cars in stopped traffic lanes on one side of the road onto the other side of the road which was free-running, then stopping whilst across 2 lanes - effectively an instant roadblock.) and me not being alert enough to react in time (a large part of it was the "what the f !?!??" factor, where an automaton would have been on the brakes immediately). The latter case was passing under pressure on a narrow rural and putting wheels on the grassy verge on the other side of the road - definitely my fault.
I like driving - when I'm driving by choice.
However, 99% of the driving I do is simply a necessity of getting from A to B and that's the kind of stuff where my attention isn't wholly on the road and what might appear on the road. This is the same for almost everyone. There are very few drivers who are paying 100% attention 100% of the time. The number of crashes is less than 1% of the number of "almost crashes" and that's a major problem, as is the number of drivers who will say "what hazard?" after they've gone past it - it simply didn't even register.
The driving force behind rapid automatisation of the road fleet will be insurance companies. The single largest class of insurance claim (class, not cost) is "reversed into another car in a parking lot/whilst parking" and they'll be extremely happy to eliminate those as they're more trouble then they're worth.
Posters here are pissing and moaning about how they won't let a robot take over. The reality is that most drivers will be throwing money at car companies to let them, and then in 10-20 years or less, not bothering because they can just hail a johnnycab for a total operational cost far less than having your own vehicle. Yes, XYZ previous passenger may make a mess of the vehicle and yes someone might crash into the thing, then claim it was the robot's fault, but onboard external and _internal_ video surveillance will make most cases open and shut (most hire vehicles already have onboard internal cameras. Many drivers already use external-facing cameras. This isn't new technology)
Almost all professional driving is on the same stretches of predicatable roads and "professional" drivers are amongst the worst offenders for dumbass manoeuvers on the road due to laziness, bad habits acquired over years of "getting away with it" and a general tendency in the field to not be the sharpest pencils in the box. This also has a lot to do with "professional drivers" tending to be those who are unemployable in most other fields due to lack of trainability and/or inability to acquire skills (aka: "Village idiot syndrome"(**)). Driving isn't difficult. Driving well isn't difficult. Driving consistently well is something altogether harder.
A human "supervisor" I can see being a requirement for a few years as a sop to various naysayers - Docklands Light Railway being one example where the "supervisor" often pretends to drive (which is amusing when you know it's the PDP11 microvax(*) running VMS under the cabin doing all the work) when their sole purpose for existence is to ensure no passengers have been caught in the doors (even door opening/closing is automated, they have an override to open in such cases and they get seriously offended when you openly laugh at them pretending to drive - even more so when you inform other passengers why you're laughing).
It is entirely possible that where an autonomous vehicle can't cope, manual driving will only be allowed at walking speed unless the operator has an advanced competency license - and quite frankly the quality of most manual driving is already terrible, so an automaton doesn't have a very high bar to reach in order to be better. It's likely that within a decade of such a change, human supervision will be found to be the cause of more costly incidents than either simply stopping or calling in external skilled assistance (like OnStar but actually useful).
(*) Yes really. The controllers in those trains genuinely are that old. The units are the last generation 4U high ones from around 1987.
(**) Put simply: The Village Idiot is a nice kid who can pitch hay with the rest of the yokels and happily run a wagon to/from the grain silo, but would you let him near the controls of your $2,500,000 John Deere combine harvester, expect him to run your accounts or even pay attention to the water and oil levels in his own car even when the idiot lights are flashing?
"professional drivers will end up on the same scrapheap that professional HORSES"
not drivers. There are very few working horses anymore. There will be few professional drivers in 80 years.
We've gone from strong bodyshells to weak to "strong in places".
5th gear in the UK ran some interesting crash tests comparing structural rigidity of things like older and newer model Renault Espace.
The newer model deformed and crushed in precise zones, protecting the occupants whilst avoiding damaging deceleration.
The older one folded up like a drinks can, offering little protection to the front seat occupants.
"Coating technology fails around seams and welds, where it is very difficult to apply"
Firstly: The coating is generally applied before sheets are pressed (Audi was the first to use galvanised steel, now everyone does it)
Secondly: Electrolytic dunking of the completed bodyshell ensures that every part ends up with protection.
Your Mazda might rust but that's primarily down to the assembly line practices, not the technology.
JDM cars have none of these technologies in the build process as they're designed for a 4-year lifespan and rust literally doesn't matter, whilst the same model built in the UK (or in Japan for export) will have extensive corrosion treatment applied and last 8-15 years before rust starts being an issue.
"I prefer to be friends with my future wife. Friends don't expect diamonds."
My wife bought me a diamond wedding ring, but that's what you kind of expect when she's a jewellery designer.
(I find it uncomfortable and it scratches stuff too much, but SWMBO has spoken)
"It's my understanding that the figure includes *all* of the earth's gold, whether currently accessible or not."
The real amount of crustal gold is unknown but that number is about right for "everything mined ever" whilst the estimated amount in the crust is about 20 times higher (just too expensive to extract)
The interesting thing is that more volume of gold is traded each year than is supposed to physically exist, which means some is whizzing around a lot or some gold reserves are actually bogus
That segues nicely into the factoid that a lot of countries are currently pissed off at the USA for refusing to return their gold reserves (much of what is in the Federal Reserve belongs to other countries) and there have been rumours circulating for the last decade that the reason the USA isn't returning it, is because they don't have it to return, having lent it out to 3rd parties as "US gold" - (ie, theft by conversion of ownership). Nooone wants to test that theory too much because if proven it would really be the end of confidence in various physical currencies.