AI Take The Wheel!

bozz(83)

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It's interesting how one post from a Hive user on the other side of the globe can tie into something of your own that has been a work in progress. I came across this really good post by @galenkp yesterday that fits with an idea I have had in my Google Keep for a few weeks now.

In fact, I just saw a story on the news the other day where they were talking about how teenagers are driving way too fast. I've seen all kinds of stories about distracted driving and impaired driving, but this is the first I have seen one about speeding.

The truth is, it isn't isolated to just teenagers. Everyone does it. I've even been known to put the pedal to the metal a time or two myself. In fact, if you asked anyone that has ridden with me, they would probably say I am an aggressive driver. I would counter that I am in fact a confident driver, but we are probably getting into the potato/potahto realm there.

@mrsbozz's new car actually has a lot of pretty cool safety features that I think help me keep some of my aggressive tendencies in check. It has a warning about getting too close to the car in front of you which is probably one of my biggest issues.

This post isn't really about my driving habits though.

I've been noticing for a while now that people just don't have the attention span for driving these days like they used to.

@tarazkp has written a number of posts over the past year talking about how attention spans in general are slowly withering. As someone who suffers from ADHD, I have never had much of an attention span, but I definitely see what he is saying.

With so many distractions and the inability to actively focus on one thing at a time, we are seeing a world full of people who just don't belong behind the wheel of a two ton death machine. Truth be told, there are probably times that I don't either.

Around where I live, many of the expressway speed limits were bumped up to 75 MPH in the past several years. For those of you who use a rational system of measurement, that's just shy of 121 KPH. Unfortunately, that isn't good enough for most people because although I tend to drive between 78 MPH (125.5 KPH) and 82 MPH (132 KPH), people are still blowing my doors off passing me. I was trying to get around a truck quick the other day and I was up to 87 MPH (140 KPH) and the guy behind me was still up my butt. He had to be going at least 90 to 95 MPH (145-153).

It's not like our expressway system is the autobahn, but many people think it is. I actually saw an article a while ago where they were saying that roads in the US are more dangerous than in the UK simply for the fact that they are so flat and straight. It's easier to zone out without all the twists and turns you get in the Europe. I totally believe it.

Which ultimately brings me to my point.

I think the roads would be much safer if everyone had self driving cars.

I know there has been a pretty large hit job happening lately over Tesla and their self driving mode. It's pretty easy to cherry pick a handful of incidents in a relatively small segment and ignore the dozens of manual auto crashes that happen every day.

I've driven down the expressway and seen people reading the paper, playing on their phone, putting on their makeup, and eating their dinner. Are you really telling me that's safer than a computer or AI that can make millions of computations per second? AI has the potential to be infinitely faster than us when it comes to reflexes. It can take into account a dozen factors that we never even considered and drive accordingly.

Of course that brings up additional issues like does the AI realize how much tread you have left on your tire? Will it not start the car if you have less than the required amount of brake pad left? These are all things to consider that could change the way the vehicle behaves and reacts

I'm not saying AI is a magic pill that will fix all the ills of the driving world, but I think it's something we need to be more open to embracing. If I had to guess, a big portion of the smear campaign is probably driven by the big 3 automakers simply because they are against anything Tesla offers.

What happens when they have a viable solution of their own to implement. What's the issue going to be then? Pretty soon we might all be driving down the road clapping our hands to "We Will Rock You" like in that GMC commercial.

At the very least we will be able to more safely take photos like the ones above that I grabbed this morning.

Don't judge me!

On a lighter note, I'm going to leave you with this fun clip from The Simpsons: