Nevada passes driverless car legislation

[Tinker]

http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2011 ... mous-autos

I wrote a story once where the inciting incident was a person being exiled to Phobos from Earth for the crime of driving. Well actually his crime was living under false identities for more than a century, the driving being a part of his over all process of hacking the system. In it Earth was sort of a soft-fascist authoritarian paradise, I guess kind of like Star Trek. And the colonization of the Solar System was the wild west.

I fear that we are automating ourselves right out of our lives.

[Tinker]

Interesting that no one has any comment on what is going to soon mean that driving is illegal. First the insurance companies will give breaks to people who allow their autopilot to drive for them, then eventually those breaks will become mandated.

In Australia they can randomly swab drivers for drug testing:

http://www.arrivealive.vic.gov.au/c_drugsAD.html

This is the road. Three cheers for 'tough on crime' politicians right?

[noddy]

got nothing to say, i can only say "bugger the fear and vanity driven middle class and their version of progressive" so many times.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 1137.story" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

some are suggesting its too risky allowing pets now... unf.

in terms of cars, they are so much the backbone of the new world - we dont have the rivers and the towns laid out along them like the continent, we just have our roads.

the freedom to travel easily to any part of our countries is a big part of what we call freedom - the ability to escape the group think of one area and find another area if it becomes intolerable is a great thing, the thing i fear the most losing, which is why the slow march to centralised "one way for all" combined with the authoritarian control and its mantra of "harm minimisation" leaves me so dastardly pessimistic about what we are doing to ourselves.

in australia we now have many new laws which are based on the SINGLE case of something bad happening - its a tragedy :/

[whose care]

[Tinker]

[anderson]

There's a pretty big upside to driverless cars though in terms of safety, and probably traffic efficiency too. Not to mention the ability to use time more effectively during travel.

[Nonc Hilaire]

[Tinker]

[anderson]

[Tinker]

[anderson]

Well, there's GPS for navigation/routing, but they'd also want to lay down a number of other information and communication systems. Somewhat parallel to what is established in aviation. Some sort of traffic and collision avoidance system (like the TCAS transponders/receivers/computer systems of large aircraft) so that cars could detect the nearby cars and interregulate the spacing and acceleration. Would probably be useful to have a dedicated wireless network connected to the internet built alongside the major highways and within the cities to transmit transient information relevant to high level traffic routing - car breakdown, road shut down for repairs due to burst water main, severe weather event.

[anderson]

[Nonc Hilaire]

[Colonel Sun]

[Demon of Undoing]

I'm sorry, I was busy watching this



Now, what were you saying about Buck Rogers optimism?

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[Tinker]