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The technology to end traffic deaths exists. Why aren’t we using it?

⁨172⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨destructdisc@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.fastcompany.com/91330938/the-technology-to-end-traffic-deaths-exists-why-arent-we-using-it-technology-and-traffic-deaths

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Comments

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  • Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    “Let’s invent metal boxes with wheels that follow lines one the ground automatically to get you places.”

    “Oh, you mean like trains.”

    “Ew, no. They’re nothing like trains, these are ‘self driving cars’. They’re fool proof!”

    tesla hits someone in a dense fog because it doesn’t have lidar

    Queue surprised pikachu.

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    • 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wait. Those things rely on visual sensors only?? That moronic! I mean, more so that I originally though. Please tell me that they have them, but this particular one was malfunctioning.

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      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Musk has sai d multiple times that humans can drive with vision alone, so cars shouldn’t need LIDAR.

        He ignores that humans also regularly experience optical illusions that contribute to poor driving and collisions, and that LIDAR is far less susceptible to such abberations.

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      • finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Very early on, Tesla used lidar in addition to optical sensors. However, they only use optical sensors today and have for a while. Like many of the poor decisions at that company, the change to optical-only was made at Musk’s demand.

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      • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Mark Rober of YouTube recently did a video demonstrating how bad tesla sensors are.

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      LiDAR is affected greatly by dense fog btw.

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    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Trains are great for moving people but only from one designated area to another. With most commuters, they might be all headed to the same city but completely different parts of the city that aren’t easy to access. Their homes might all be in the same city but a 45 minute bus ride to the 40 minute train ride to the 20 minute bus ride, which isn’t helpful for what might have been a 45 minute commute by car to begin with.

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      • Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Imagine if all the space between the primary radial arms of trains was filled in with street cars and pedestrian/micromobility centric spaces. Like the problem you are saying cars solve just doesn’t exist in the first place and people can still get around very easily. Even more rural folks can simply drive to the edge of this style of urban design if they need access to something. The reason bus rides are 45 minutes is because of the number of cars they have to put up with. The density of people that can be moved with shockingly good area coverage if cars are not a factor is incredible.

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      U less you replace every road with train tracks, trains can’t replace cars.

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    • dinckelman@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Doesn’t even need to be dense fog. The other day I saw a video of a Tesla (on newest firmware, mind you) drove off the road into a tree, in broad daylight, with no visual impairments to the sensors. It’s not ready for any kind of driving, let alone fully automated, not to mention that it’s only really trained on American roads

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  • Cyv_@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m all for better safety features but perhaps an easier, cheaper, and more likely to succeed option to use is city planning/enforcement and change of current regulations. For instance, closing the loophole that lets car manufacturers ignore safety and emissions rules for “light truck” classified cars, which at this point is most of the oversized SUVs and pickups.

    Alternatively having safer options for pedestrians and cyclists would help too, like having separated bike roads, and pushing highways and stroads out of residential areas and reclaiming city space for pedestrians. Public transit investment also helps reduce the number of drivers, which helps traffic and safety too.

    I don’t hate the idea of these extra AI tools like emergency braking being required or at least encouraged with stuff like safety ratings, but I think it’s going to be very hard to get that implemented anytime soon considering you’d be fighting consumer interest(higher cost cars) and companies who don’t want to have to make or license AI tools.

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    • shiroininja@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The Problem is, the whole pedestrian and cyclist centric society only works of we also restructure the entire economic system to where workers have an extra hour and a half to two hours of free time outside of work. Because we already don’t have enough time for our families and children.

      Like me for instance. I have like 3 waking hours to spend with my child (once you minus, cooking, cleaning, adulting) if I’m lucky each day. Driving to work is a highway exit away on the other side of town. With a car, that’s 6 minutes each way. On a bike? 40 minutes minimum. Public transit? With transfers, even longer.

      And then you have to juggle picking up your child from childcare, etc with is ridiculous without a car. And living closer to your work is a funny idea unless you expect every neighborhood to have offices and warehouses representing every industry. I mean it sounds great for the upper middle class with shorter office jobs and the finances for that kind of lifestyle, but that’s just not feasible for real working class Americans in the economic system as it is currently

      It’s for singles who can tralala themselves around on a bike or have a leisurely stroll to wherever they’re going and who don’t really cook or anything themselves.

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      • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        but that’s just not feasible for real working class Americans in the economic system as it is currently

        Nothing to do with economics, everything to do with city planning and resource allocation. Public transit and bikes are a bad option in the US because the transit is completely underfunded, “only poor people take the bus”, and bike paths, even pedestrian paths (if they even exist) are sent on detours around car infrastructure instead of cutting through everything.

        And then you have to juggle picking up your child from childcare, etc with is ridiculous without a car.

        My mum did just fine first coming by with the bike, putting me on the back seat, then swinging by the supermarket, groceries in the front basket, later on coming by with the bike, me riding along on my own, still swinging by the supermarket. We were driving on calm backstreets and through a park which was actually the most direct route, much more direct than with a car as you’d have to get onto the collector, first. Got more than one kid to wrangle? Put them in a trailer, or get a suitable cargo bike. They can even have seatbelts.

        No, you don’t need a warehouse full of washing machines in every neighbourhood. People don’t shop for washing machines daily. People don’t need cars to shop for them, either, delivering bulky stuff makes a ton of sense. Groceries? Wherever you were that day, a supermarket should only be like a two or three minutes detour.

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      While I agree in concept, redesigning and rebuilding society to be less car centric would NOT be fast or easy.

      It’s better in so many ways and I wish more Americans could experience the freedom and convenience of walkable and transit oriented areas to understand how unpleasant their cars really are. But if even if we seriously pursued that, it would be many decades, probably more like a century. In the meantime electric vehicles are much better than what we use now

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t hate the idea of these extra AI tools

      Those are not AI.

      considering you’d be fighting consumer interest(higher cost cars) and companies who don’t want to have to make or license AI tools.

      Openpilot is FOSS. Any OEM could use it without even asking permission.

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      • Cyv_@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The reason I mention AI is because the article talks about AI tools to predict accidents as well. I also googled Openpilot and this is from their wiki page.

        In contrast to traditional autonomous driving solutions where the perception, prediction, and planning units are separate “modules”, openpilot adopts a system-level end-to-end design to predict the car’s trajectory directly from the camera images. openpilot’s end-to-end design is a neural network that is trained by comma.ai using real-world driving data uploaded by openpilot users.[34]

        So uh. It might be AI

        Also it seems openpilot requires hardware for the cameras and stuff, they aren’t going to strap third party cameras to cars to sell new. They’d have to implement the sensors in the car itself, and doing so would cost more than nothing.

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  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There is an obvious answer here that both the author and the people in this thread are ignoring.

    Driving as a transportation method is a high risk/cost high flexibility/comfort solution.

    Pretty much everyone who has accepted driving as their transportation method understands that it’s not the safest ways, so a lot of drivers are always willing to take a little bit more risk to save money or something like that.

    A better question is, why are we so okay with accepting such high risks for transportation. The human mind is terrible at risk assessment so I think it’s just culture that car accidents are a part of life.

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    • billiam0202@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Americans are real good at ignoring issues that don’t affect them personally.

      Oh I won’t wreck my car, I’m a “good driver”!

      I can’t catch Covid because it’s not real!

      School shootings are just false flags the government uses to pass gun control laws!

      Donald Trump only wants to remove the dangerous immigrants, not the ones I hire for my business!

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    • atmorous@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We need more people part of the FuckCars, Walk, Bike, & Public Transit online cultures

      Need more outreach to get things happening even more. Also my comment on this post would solve a lot of things by not having to redo outreaching to people

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      • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Even better, the equivalent irl cultures. Most cities have groups advocating for better bike and pedestrian infrastructure and better public transit.

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  • Quazatron@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Trains? We’ve been using those for over a century now.

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    • 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They don’t help with last mile.

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      • sbv@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Have you considered more trains?

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      • Quazatron@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        There are a lot of other neat inventions that deal with that.

        The problem with traffic is caused by lack of investment in public transportation. Have a look at how they solved it in Paris.

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      • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The last mile can be 25 mph. That alone will eliminate 99% of traffic deaths, especially if the roads are designed to make it uncomfortable to go above 25 mph.

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      • Evkob@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        More trains, trams, bicycle and/or e-scooter rentals, walking (a mile is what, 20 minutes walk at most?)

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Bicycles.

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  • who@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The technologies mentioned in the article:

    lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection

    AI-powered traffic systems

    On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors

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    • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Only one of my cars has just one of those things (blind spot monitor). That aside, all of my vehicles - cars and motorcycles - are paid off. I’m not going into debt just to have nannies yelling at me.

      My vehicles are a means to an end. I would absolutely love more public transit, but there is just a single train station about 12 miles from my house, while my work is only 6 miles in the same direction. “You could bike” you might say, which is a fantastic idea. However, 90% of my commute is on a 55mph rural highway with minimal shoulders and zero bike lanes. It’s literally a perfect candidate for a bus route, yet there are none.

      Now tell me how I’m the problem.

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    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      with every section it just became worse

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    • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      All of those things are garbage and don’t work, they just drive you nuts until you turn them off.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And they missed some really low hanging, inexpensive solutions that would also work:

      • roundabouts
      • mass transit
      • physical barriers for bike lanes
      • zoning changes

      Those are all old “technologies” that are proven to be effective and don’t require giving car manufacturers an excuse to make cars even more expensive or retrofitting existing cars.

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  • innermachine@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What a load of fear mongering. Instead of having people take accountability for their actions we should require “safety features” that have a direct correlation to increased distracted driving. Maybe if somebody is killed we should make regulations around driving drunk? Oh yea pretty sure that exists. Problem is we have a bunch of steering wheel holders, hardly anybody is a driver anymore. Would lane assist and auto braking have prevented this? Possibly. But would lane assist not keep him barrel assing down the road doing up through the next intersection where somebody may decide to cross the road? This is not a fix. We have ALWAYS had the “technology” to avoid traffic deaths, problem is most people are selfish self centered pricks with but a ball of lint between their ears.

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    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The technology isn’t great, but rather than implement it, you want us to expect humans to be great.

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      • innermachine@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I wouldn’t call paying attention while you hurdle down a strip of pavement at 60mph in a 2 ton metal cage being “great”, id call it the minimum. And I’m not saying don’t implement it, I’m just saying it’s absurd to act like forcing it in every car is gonna fix the problem. It’s just gonna make vehicles less affordable and add failure points.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Autonomous vehicles. They don’t get high, they don’t get distracted, and if they’re made by literally anyone except for Tesla, they have superhuman vision and not only don’t have blind spots, they can also see in the dark and see through steam and fog.

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    • the_q@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      This will only ever work if all vehicles were autonomous. Any human interaction introduces unpredictable behavior into an otherwise “perfect” system.

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      • neatchee@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        This is misleading and dangerous rhetoric.

        Autonomous vehicles - actual autonomous ones, not Tesla bullshit marketing “self-driving” - are already significantly safer than human drivers. Yes, they are limited to certain conditions (they don’t handle inclement weather very well yet) but the point is that they are already improving safety over human drivers.

        Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

        Additionally, once autonomous vehicles become the standard, you will see a dramatic shift in how the insurance industry operates.

        Think about it: if I’m not the one driving, why would I be the one taking on liability? I wouldn’t. The manufacturer would. Suddenly, the insurance industry would be targeting vehicle/software producers instead of individuals. And anyone who chooses to drive themselves anyway? They would almost always be liable by default. Premiums for drivers would skyrocket and this would be a huge disincentive to getting behind the wheel in the first place.

        Don’t. Let. The. Perfect. Be. The. Enemy. Of. The. Good.

        We all lose out. And it costs lives.

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      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The returns grow exponentially, yes. Even removing some of the bad (i.e., human) drivers is clearly better than *none."

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    • themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If I could cut my work time by my driving time, because I would be able to work from the car, it would be an absolute game changer for my family life.

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  • underline960@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What technology?

    Safety features like lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection…

    … AI-powered traffic systems that predict and prevent accidents.](bellevuewa.gov/city-government/…/vision-zero)…

    Impaired driving is also solvable. On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors… Uber is already testing real-time driver sobriety verification…

    Why aren’t we using it?

    The article doesn’t have an answer.

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    • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I have driven a car with a form of lane assist, it works fine when the lanes are easily seen and the weather is fine. The only way as system like that should be allowed to exist without a disable button is with extremely precise GPS maps because everything else seems to fail.

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    • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Because its garbage :

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=agi-iFm2q6I

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    • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Because of how it will go when everyone assumes the car they are trying to merge with will auto brake if they go for it.

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    • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It does. It says it’s optional, only in new cars, and it costs extra money, which anyone with half a brain could have told you.

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  • Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    One of the many things I like about Subaru is that they seem to move useful features from optional to standard, once they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. I bought an Outback in 2016 and paid extra for the EyeSight safety system. Two years later that car was destroyed in an accident (I was T-boned and rolled over twice, without anyone being hurt). I bought another Outback to replace it, but by that time the EyeSight was a standard feature. Subaru now includes EyeSight on all their cars because it saves lives.

    They had done similar things with other safety features. Four-wheel disc brakes, anti-lock braking, and all-wheel drive became standard on Sabarus relatively early.

    It is also worth noting that the more intrusive EyeSight features, like lane assist, are easy to turn off. There’s a button on the steering wheel for that one. Even if you turn it off, the car will still warn you if you start to cross lanes without using your turn signals, but it will not adjust for you.

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    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Meanline Tesla: were removing radar and make the car blind when it rains to cut costs.

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  • ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Public transportation or bust

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  • aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The technologies to end a lot of problems exist. We aren’t using them because the oligarchs think it’s better this way.

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    • socsa@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      This is definitely a great example of individuals being obstinate and entitled. Just mention you support speed cameras on all roads and find out how many of your friends think speeding is a good given human rights.

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      • nickhammes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Speed cameras are a privacy issue that doesn’t solve the problem of speeding. People are most comfortable driving the speed the road is designed for, and if that speed is too high, the solution is to modify the road for a safer speed. The speeders in your example are right here, for the wrong reason; speed cameras should be rare if they’re allowed to exist at all. They have, at most, a short term benefit, and broad public surveillance is a very serious issue they contribute to.

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      • queermunist@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s my understanding that speed cameras don’t actually make roads safer, they just generate revenue for the city.

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    No. It doesn’t.

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  • Repelle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    My cars are old and don’t have any of this, and my one experience in a rental car with lane keeping assist was that it pushed me towards a highway barrier in construction where the original lane lines weren’t in use. Terrifying.

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  • dhork@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The solution is to raise better humans who make better choices, not to use technology to prevent our bad choices from being worse.

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  • Goretantath@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Because people want to drive theur cars instead if let a system handle everything perfectly. Theres no way to have safe driving with people behind the wheel.

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  • atmorous@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The biggest solution to all of our problems is having Revolt, & Matrix community servers setup where people can join based on their State, & also other community servers for their Country. With goal of having a single spot to get things done collectively, inform each other about all kinds of good and bad things, discuss topics, make stuff happen for better, collaborate on projects, have fun together, & much more

    I’m one of a couple hundred people working on it but need more people on board to do it.

    We The People means Unity in every sense of the word in person and online to get things done together by doing

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  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Impaired driving is also solvable. On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors are all tools that already exist to stop drunk and high drivers before they even start the ignition. Uber is already testing real-time driver sobriety verification. Why aren’t carmakers racing to put similar tech in every new vehicle?

    There’s no fucking way people will buy those cars is why. I will never buy a car that required a saliva test or blowing into a tube before starting. IMO any car that includes that requirement would be a flop before it even hit the showroom floors.

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  • andybytes@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Mountains of shame looking for someone to blame, yet taking away our autonomy is the game.

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  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Autonomous driving. As long as people are behind the wheel deaths will be high. Autonomous driving is not perfection, but it will be safer by an order of magnitude. It will come to scale decades later than it should due to a human sense of loss of control causing resistance to change at the cost of many thousands of lives.

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