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Driverless Cars and Sobriety
I’d like to make a prediction: driverless cars — which are back in the news — will undermine our culture’s strong censure of drunkenness. I think we will revert to the kind of relaxed view toward mild inebriation that was the case in, for example, pre-automobile England.
Giving ordinary people the power to control high-speed vehicles initiated a unique era where anyone might wreak unintended violence upon innocents through a mere moment’s inattention. The driverless car era will bring that to and end and, consequentially, the stigma against being tipsy will fade. I predict people will look back on this era with pity and horror (probably over drinks).
I’m not saying this will be a good thing; I’m just making a prediction. Certain drinking habits, now hidden, will come to light and we’ll learn about the true extent of alcohol consumption and high-functioning alcoholism.
How else might driverless cars change the culture?
Published in Culture, Science & Technology
I so love being a hacker in this new modern age. In the old days I used to have fun by having bells go off, lights blink, printer start up and phones ring for no reason. Imagine how much fun I can have with a driverless car. I am just giddy with anticipation.
I’m not convinced.
In general, over time, state/provincial governments tend to liberalize their liquor laws more than they tighten liquor regulations.
In Ontariostan it’s pretty much tradition that every newly elected government liberalizes the liquor laws in some way. In the 1990s it became legal to sell booze on golf courses (as opposed to only selling it in the clubhouse). In the 2000s it became legal to bring your own wine to a restaurant. This year beer will be sold in (select) grocery stores for the first time since the 1930s.
It’s a very popular vote-winner, which is why they’ll never eliminate all the booze regulations in one go since that would ruin the game for future elections.
Better to distract the voters by increasing freedoms in this small area at the same time they’re taking away bigger and more important freedoms through taxes and environmental regs.
The voters of 20 years ago are not the voters of today. Or how does a crypto-Marxist like Obama get elected twice, and a blatant socialist like Bernie even stand a chance?
Our left-wing institutions have trained the citizenry to fear or hate freedom and rapidly embrace central control over every aspect of their lives.
Driver-less cars will:
Driver-less cars may:
And yet, marijuana is on the path to legalization.
I say it’s not quite so simple. Yes, of course, voters can (and frequently are) convinced to vote away their freedoms, but it’s not a monolithic and unstoppable trend.
Nor is it anything new.
The voters supported Prohibition, did they not? And then, they changed their minds and supported its repeal.
If you make killing the driverless car the priority, you’ll lose completely. If you make holding governments to account in the way they regulate driverless cars, then you’ll win some and you’ll lose some.
Fred Cole and I are in 100% agreement on an issue????? DangIT!! Why couldn’t this have happened last week! I would have bought a Powerball ticket on those odds.
I love that place. Haven’t been there for several years, but I’ve still got some of their ceramic/clay mugs. Great for drinking beer, BTW.
Everyone’s being too optimistic.
Driverless cars will have a manual override (even if they become so capable that the override is just an emergency brake).
Passengers will have the responsibility to remain sober enough to know when to to employ the override.
It’ll be an authoritarian twofer: we won’t be able to drive when, the route or the speed we want, and we’ll have to be sober while doing it.
Lookeethat, it’s past noon, my time. Time to start drinkin’.
Speed limits are really only necessary because of human response time. My little Jetta can do 105 without breaking a sweat, but not unless I’ve had a cup of coffee.
The same goes for stop signs. The law says stop for 3 seconds because that’s how long it takes for the average human to react to what’s happening on the other side of all the windows. But a computer can absorb and process information from all directions in much less time, and (usually) much more accurately.
I also look forward to napping during my longer drives.
I’ve some friends in rural NH who are sufficiently off the grid so that there’s no useful cell reception within 30 miles of them. It makes taking the back roads to their place a lot more fun (and reminds me what actual car navigation was like).
do you remember the Asimov story about long division?
That’s why we have brake lights, too. The human mind won’t be able to notice/calculate/react to the deceleration of the vehicle in front of you without a cue.
As someone who’s played chauffer to her husband for over a year due to a deteriorating eye condition that has reached the point where it’s not safe for him to drive, I like the sound of this – although old age brings more reasons for discontinuing driving than just bad eyesight.
But for various reasons from societal tradeoffs to safety concerns, the paranoid side of me cringes at the thought of a totally driverless society.
I don’t know, I’ve not the technical knowledge, but the discussion got my attention. I’d guess it won’t be the technology that slows it all down, it will be the difficulty of merging all the interests, urban commuters, the automobile culture, central planners and conflicting interests from one end of the road to the other, things that are always in flux. A regimenting and control will be required that will give rise to push back. What that looks like 10 years from now is anybody’s guess. We call them robots but there is a programmer behind every move isn’t there? While chess has almost infinite possible moves, the board and rules don’t change. Human systems are characterized by ordered chaos that reconfigures with every rule change.
This conjures up a vision of Friedrich von Hayek trapped inside a driverless car, pounding on the windows that muffle his screams.
“Totally driverless…” is scary.
But certainly there is a place for the technology. A machine is going to sense when to brake suddenly and apply the brakes more safely in response to an imminent collision, even compared to an experienced driver. Or, perhaps there could be driverless zones. Every week, I drive my daughter to a music studio in downtown St. Paul and every week, something cringe-worthy happens on the streets. If I could choose driverless mode, in the driverless lane as I pass Cossetta’s, we could all relax. Switch it off again on the freeway entrance. Unless it’s icy. It just seems there is a world of possibility in this technology to make movement through the city more efficient as well as safer, without sacrificing all of a driver’s autonomy.
First bolded statement: How would driverless cars do that? The person’s still living the same distance from work.
Second bolded statement: Lamborghini’s are about more than speed. They’re also about prestige and displaying wealth. As long as that’s the case, there will be a market for them – even if they do become driverless.
“Car, I have to make water!”
“I’m sorry Dave, you should have thought about that before we left.”
“Well, I didn’t have to go then. Hey, there’s a gas station up ahead.”
“That gas station didn’t pay to advertise on Google Earth so I don’t even know that it exists. I will stop at the next sponsored men’s room.”
As I recall, Dave once said his 18-wheeler would automatically apply the brakes if someone cut too close in front of him. If so, he probably has a strong opinion about semi-automated driving as it stands today.
I would love to be chauffered by a robot. But I’d pack a stun gun and a crowbar just in case.
Kids are fighting in the back seat.
Robot voice comes on: If I have to pull this car over…
People already buy sports cars and then drive the speed limits, because a sports car advertises to police that you’re tempted to speed. The brighter the paint, the bolder the ad.
I totally agree. I would love for my husband to be able to get in a car like he used to be able to and go wherever he wanted without having to rearrange my schedule to take him there. I would love to be able to tell my non-driving kids they can get in the car and go to that activity I’d rather not drive to. And should the opportunity ever come in my lifetime to take advantage of the technology, I very well might do so.
But technology (especially modern technology) is a double-edged sword. There are always tradeoffs. And since we as a society aren’t necessarily good at managing those tradeoffs and keeping the proverbial horse in the barn, the one thing I feel certain about where driverless cars are concerned is that they will change society in many ways – some of which will be totally unexpected and a few of which will be outright negative.
If the car thinks it can straighten my two out, I would certainly let it try.
This is what Uber is for.
One day, a solar storm will knock out the network and we will all get unscheduled road tours of America.
I keep looking at drones and thinking they are getting almost big enough to carry a person. That would be so much fun.
The 55 MPH speed limit was implemented in 1974 to improve fuel efficiency, not to reduce collision rates.
By this logic, it makes perfect sense for the government to impose speed limits on driverless cars, even though these vehicles could be perfectly safe at higher speeds than human drivers could handle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
You’re five years behind the times. It was first done in 2011:
The limiting factor is battery life.
Gas-powered single-seat copters have been around since at least 1967, when You Only Live Twice was released.
Wow.
I did not realize that.
In 2011? They must be further along by now.
Interesting to what would happen with 100 million in the sky. :)
I think this is right