this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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People have been bad at it for a hundred years. I'm not saying that people should necessarily be using auto-steering that keeps them in the middle of their lanes, but they should at least be using systems that beep at them when they stray out of their lane.
The bar for self-driving technology isn't some amazing perfect computer that never makes a mistake. It's the average driver. The average driver is bad.
we can do two things (these are not mutually exclusive):
-take further control away from the drivers and make them dependent on a computer, which can always misunderstand a situation and make the driver responsible for it.
-educate drivers properly, at least in the US. americans have been historically bad at driving and have also been known to be undereducated.
I'm all for more driver education, and for stricter licensing requirements like they have in Europe. Having said that, eventually computers are going to have to take over.
It's pretty absurd that we're handing control over multi-ton devices traveling at tens of meters per second to fallible, bored, easily distracted humans. The safer cars get, the safer drivers feel. The safer drivers feel, the less they feel they need to concentrate on driving.
Safe driving just will never be a skill that humans will be good at. The tasks that humans are good at that require concentration are tasks that are challenging and remain challenging. Think playing a sport where there's always action and you have to react. Humans are bad at tasks that are mostly routine and boring, but if your concentration lapses you can cause a catastrophe. Those are the kinds of tasks where people get bored so they start glancing away, reading a book or looking at a smartphone, or whatever. For driving to be engaging, it has to be non-boring, which means non-safe. The safer it gets, the more boring it gets, so people stop paying the required attention. There's just no winning.