Please excuse me for starting yet another self-driving car thread, but I did not want to hijack someone else's discussion.
Jalopnik says that self-driving cars have only been a few years away for decades, much like flying cars and virtual reality--and presumably, self-flying cars with virtual reality.
I have a friend that insists that self-driving cars would be hacked.
I call her a know-it-all.
She says I'm a know-it-all.
She also says that the same bad drivers will be programming the cars.
I insist they will not be texting and coding. Plus, I am pretty sure that programming gets tested, while texts are not proofread. Messages still send with invalid syntax.
Jalopnik also brought up terrorist attacks. I recently asked if self-driving cars would be easier or more difficult to steal, but in theory, a terrorist would need to hack a vehicle, but if they could, that could be a pandemic.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6543a8.htm
Vehicular injuries are significantly down, vehicular homicide is down slightly, and suicide has roughly been constant. As long as programmers can prevent vehicles from being hacked, all of these go down, if not away, right?
In the comments, people discussed requiring continual driver training and testing, but someone asked how much that would cost, who would pay for it, and how it compared to self-driving vehicles.
Would the world be better or worse with automatic blinkers?
Jalopnik pointed out that traffic fatalities would halve if people just wore seatbelts.
"I don’t want an autonomous car. I want a robot butler who can drive a regular car."
"[T]here are cameras on the highways [in England] that monitor if you’re wearing a seatbelt. I’d imagine similar could be used to flag people on cell phones."
I understand that photo radar takes people's money without changing their behavior. In my experience, people slow down for them, but speed back up immediately.
"In 2013, at least 697 people were killed in an accident that involved running a red light while an estimated 127,000 were injured. Last year, some 3.7 million drivers received a violation for driving through a red light."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc.../#5b3c8f73db27
3,700,000 people were cited for running red lights, but 700 or more people died anyway.
Perhaps the fines are not enough.
What do you fine and informed people think of these arguments?