I don't want my car driving me!!!!!

Here's a couple of case examples of the dangers of over relying on automation. The big problem with automation as that it is set to operate within certain parameters. If those parameters are exceeded, then it doesn't work any more. If as drivers we raise a generation that solely relies on automated driving, we will see more of what happened to the air crash below

Air France Flight 447

The plane dropped or of auto pilot in the dead of night in a storm. All it's instruments went haywire and the pilots had no idea what was going on, despite the fact the plane was actually still flying perfectly at the time if dropped out. They actually caused it to crash because they were trying to react to incorrect instrument readings.

Esc on cars; I

Just today I was towing my caravan over a straight, flat road which in itself seems fairly harmless. However the road was well chopped up and the car started jiggling noticeably as the car and van were negotiating the bumps. It was one of those harmonic sort of motions and looked / felt more dangerous than it actually was. The car felt in total control, but the pitch and yaw sensor had a mini melt down causing the esc warning light to come on. Because the movement was outside the programmed parameters, it just shut down on me. Imagine if I had been relying of auto pilot in the car - It would have crashed on a straight road for no good reason.

As a human, I just held on to the wheel, waited for the rough patch to end then pulled over then turned off the car to reset the computer. Before i knew it, we were off again business as usual with esc working like normal.

a reply to: PollyPeptide

There are many sides to things, and those that choose only one perspective, could be called 'selfishly stubborn people'.

Self-driving cars save lives. Whether that's good or bad, is debatable on an overpopulated planet, but I know I'd rather be driven by a Tesla than some half-asleep drug-addict occupied with their cell phones and their mind somewhere else than where it should be.

People are BAD at focusing on a tedious, monotonous task for extended periods of time, no matter how intelligent they are othewise, computers are -excellent- at it. Even young people's reflexes are laughably bad compared to a computer's. If you have seen the videos, you know Tesla can spot a situation LONG before any human would even SUSPECT anything is wrong, and act upon it many seconds earlier than any human ever could, even the fastest-reflexes-in-the-world-amphetaminehead.

Do you also want to pilot your own airplanes and drive your own trains and buses? What's so luxurious or even interesting about driving your own car? Sure, you should have the FREEDOM to drive if you want to do it, and doing it just for fun from time to time I can understand, but being locked to that - let's face it - tedious task over and over again, every single day, is not going to be good for anyone.

It's a blessing if machines can relieve and liberate human beings from robotic, tedious, cumbersome, repetitive tasks. You will be more refreshed if you have been driven somewhere, than if you had to drive there by yourself and possibly took the wrong turn and had to suffer idiots who almost cut you off, etc. You don't have to stress or spend expletives.

If every car, or at least most cars on public roads were driven by computers (hopefully not programmed by microsoft), they could form an 'optimally driving network' that would actually be WAY more efficient than modern traffic (even with same amount of cars), they would pretty much NEVER have an accident (of course due to human error, sometimes accidents would happen anyway), and so on.

There are so many good things to say about self-driving cars, I can't believe anyone could SERIOUSLY be against it, especially when the only argument is "my brain is petrol and I WANNAAAAAA!!!11".

This planet is getting so polluted, I am glad the electric cars are FINALLY starting to be reality even here. I've been waiting for DECADES for that to happen, so the backwards cavemen that want to live in the noise pollution and breathe gasolin can't stop the progress, thankfully. They can kick and scream like the infantile minds they are, but electric cars accelerate faster, they're more efficient, they cost less to maintain and operate, they have fewer (WAY fewer) moving parts, you never become OILY or DIRTY from an electric car, they can basically drive INDOORS due to being clean and pollution-free, and so on and so forth.

I don't see how anyone RATIONAL would have any arguments against all this.

"I hate it!" is not an argument, by the way. I hate people's shockingly primitive and pollution-worshipping reactions to electric cars probably more than you can EVER hate electric cars or self-driving cars.

I am all for autonomy, freedom, human rights and fun, but safety and efficiency are much bigger things when it comes to commuting and overall traffic. I would never remove 'driving your own car by yourself' away from anyone, but when you think about it, isn't it more luxurious if someone else drives you, so you don't have to? Isn't it eventually more fun to only drive when you want to have fun instead of HAVING to do it every day? Isn't it more fun to drive somewhere desolate fast, than sit in daily traffic at 3 cm per hour speed for hours?

Also, the NOISE - will this planet _FINALLY_ become quiet enough so I don't have to use earplugs 24h per day?

Will there FINALLY be traffic that doesn't almost explode my eardrums?

There will probably always be weird 'noise lovers' for some reason - I don't understand it any more than people that bring screaming kids to supermarkets, but the bad thing about that is, OTHERS HAVE TO SUFFER FROM YOUR CHILDISH LUST FOR NOISE. What kind of an entity needs to constantly make lots of noise to bother others anyway? Where's the civilized behaviour in that?

Besides, electric cars make the greatest sound - it's quite, but futuristic, you can imagine being in a spaceship or a time machine, and their acceleration is unmatched, as they have full torque 100% of the time.

Yeah.. I hate slow-accelerating, noisy, polluting monsters that disrupt my thoughts (let alone conversations) just so some egotistical gasbrain can make some machine scream " LOOK, HERE I COME, ISN'T MY EGO LOUD AND WONDERFUL?!"

Sigh... people of this planet.. I'll never understand them.