Comment on Someone should really develop this idea
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 day agoA
self-drivingcar would save me at least 45 minutes during my commutes (one way), purely because of the flexibility.
Fixed that for you. I don’t see how “self-driving” would be 45 minutes faster.
AliOski@feddit.nl 1 day ago
True, but that requires me having a drivers license + requires me driving. We are talking about the comparison to train commutes and the usefulness of self-driving technology. I don’t drive the train.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You used the self-driving bit saving you time as an argument in favor of self-driving cars, hence the correction. The time save has nothing to do with who operates the car (unless it’s a F1 driver).
The problem is that this whole debate is poisoned. Self-driving cars are not, and will likely never be safe. They can be safer on average than human drivers, it’s just that other people will die in accidents than those killed by reckless drivers. The ones dying will die due to software errors / profit calculations and the likes. As such, promoting self-driving without a mechanical guiding control (as in railways) is highly unethical.
It might be possible to overcome the technological challenges of safe self-driving, but humankind as a whole is too selfish and profit-driven to ever reach a point where that kind of research will even be funded with any meaningful budget. That’s my prediction.
AliOski@feddit.nl 1 day ago
In one of my other comments I mentioned the reduce of traffic jams as an argument, due to coordination between vehicles.
About the accidents: reckless drivers also (mainly even I think, no source) kill innocent people on the road. Reducing the total amount of deaths is more important than some supposed moral superiority of only reckless drivers dying vs people dying due to technical faults.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes, that is possible. However, in today’s neofascist regimes, this is a beloved excuse for total surveillance. Not that they still need it - we basically have always-online and trackable cars already anyways. :(
This is an alternative of the trolley problem. There’s no clear ethical answer to this. Personally, I think that today’s technology proves that companies will always put profits over safety, and I will always prefer to control my own vehicle when it comes to personal travel, over having any kind of safety relevant automation. Just think of Boeing’s 737 MAX debacle, where Boeing murdered (with the amount of criminal energy they put into obfuscating the redesign of the plane there’s no other way for me to see this) the crew and passengers of two civil airliners for profit.
We’re not doing anything meaningful against reckless drivers in today’s world, even when it’s trivial, and our governments are corrupt to the core and will never exert more control over corporations than they will over private people who drive recklessly.