(04-02-2018, 07:13 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(04-02-2018, 01:51 AM)HandsomeRob86 Wrote: Until we have 'air traffic control' for roads with preplaned routes and about 1,000,000 times less cars with no obstacles to hit and no lanes to stay in, that analogy is stupendously bad. And they still need pilots for take off and landing even with all those advantages.

My understanding is, the landing is done by computer.   Pilots don't actually land passenger planes any more.

My faith in self driving cars comes in part from my experience in business.   Around 1990, we started a business that automated the way prices are quoted and offers are generated by sales people.   The response we very often got was, what if your program or database has a mistake in it, and I lose money as a result?   And our response to that was, our program/database will inevitably contain errors, but the error rate from using our program and database will be far less than the error rate you will have without it.   Over time, our product was widely adopted, and now people cannot do without it.  

That's the deal with self-driving cars.   Even now, they make far fewer mistakes than humans make, and it'll get even better over time.   So some guy crashes his Tesla and dies, and it's treated like it's the end of self driving cars.  That's ridiculous.   Self driving cars are going to happen.  The world moves forward.

A lot of so-called human error is people just being plain stupid. Drunk driving, distracted driving, failing to follow even basic driving rules and regulations (like a rolling stop at a traffic light or stop sign), etc. Every single one of those things are preventable if people would actually engage in the act of safe driving.

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