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hateselfdriving 4 days ago

Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle.

Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers.

What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming.

Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted.

You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.

bluGill 3 days ago | parent [-]

Have you ever looked at how humans drive? Not the drunks, but the average person - they are terrible. You are not better. Self driving doesn't have to be very good to be better than humans.

hateselfdriving 3 days ago | parent [-]

The _average_ person drives just fine. It's specifically the idiots who either should never have been allowed to pass a driver's test in the first place (i.e. lack the motor skills and/ or mental capacity) and the idiots who are so addicted to their phones they can't go 2 minutes without looking at it. I have a very hard time believing those are the majority or even average based on all my time driving.

Which, these issues can be reduced if we stop giving people small slaps on the wrist for driving in ways that greatly endanger others. Hefty fines, temporary/ permanent driving bans, etc. Make people actually pause to consider their actions for once in their lives.

Wow, an improvement we can start doing _today_, that doesn't involve forking over billions of dollars to tech companies to pump out half-baked "self-driving" capabilities. These companies' mission isn't to save lives, in case that's not obvious, it's to _make money_. They are not and have never been interested in potentially simpler/ better solutions if they don't lead to sucking the consumer dry of their money.