This is where this whole development is counter-productive. The AV idea obviously comes out from wanting the roads to be a safer place. Yet by developing driver aids, we are directly encouraging drivers who are now more and more relying on these automatism's and driver aids (that will eventually progress to autonomous vehicles) to rely more on the tech rather than their own instincts and ability. In other words; We are encouraging less attention while driving, because there's a driver assistance module that will "jump in" warn and supposedly save the day. Until it doesn't.
A friend of mine's parking sensor was broken/blocked. Guess what happened? Drove right into the pillar of an underground parking in reverse. Extensive damage. Thanks to all these gadgets, people are becoming more and more reliant on them, to the point they fully trust it and are hopelessly inapt to doing it how they once learned it when they learned how to drive. Same applies to all other gadgets that are finding their way into modern cars.
I can already see the first big accidents coming with semi assisted AVs when people will be reading newspapers while on their commute to work, only to crash because the car overlooked something obvious to the human-eye/brain, but not the AV.
I get the point that the tech will not evolve over night, but it is scary to think how all the effort being sunk into this kind of tech only really makes us more muted as we give up our responsibilities to a piece of software.
EXACTLY
That's the point I was trying to make earlier. As we give the car more and more responsibility we dodge our own responsibilities and even forget how to drive.
.
And all this is part of the point I tried to get across as well.
We are trying to dodge all responsibility not just driving.
We need some one else to pick our hotel. An "app" to find the cheapest insurance. Note that's the cheapest not necessarily the best just the cheapest. To choose our style of clothing. Hell we need a site to find us a mate.
To drive for us is just the latest in a long list.
I have a friend who told me his children have never driven a manual transmission car.
Why? Because the driving school used automatics. Driving school??? We can't even take on the responsibility of teaching our kids to drive. No wonder the roads are crowded with incompetents. I've seen those so called schools. All they teach is how to keep the car between the white lines, how to get through a fast food drive thru and how to pass the test.
We are passing on all our traditional responsibilities so when we get something we don't like we can blame the "app" or whoever made our decisions for us. I don't know which is worse the dating app or the one that picks and deals for a car for us.
To achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster.”
Sir Stirling Moss