It’s a curious thing . . .
The same government which says it’s so very “concerned” about our saaaaafety that it won’t allow us to ride a motorcycle without a helmet – and will threaten us with violence if we don’t wear a seat belt – won’t allow us to disable known-to-be dangerous air bags and is very loosey-goosey about self-driving/automated cars.
Which have demonstrated how unsafe they are.
Like air bags, automated cars have killed – unlike me not buckling up. But that’s not enough to get them banned or even restricted very much.
Uber just resumed testing its self-driving cars on pubic roads, in Pennsylvania – nine months after it voluntarily suspended testing them in Arizona, following some negative publicity about one of its self-driving cars driving over a pedestrian while the “driver” slumbered.
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Consider that: Uber (and it’s not just Uber) voluntarily suspended their testing – which the government allows – on public roads. Where, one assumes, the public is very much exposed to whatever “glitches” happen to arise.
California just “gave Zoosk” – another insipidly-named company – “permission” to operate automated ride-sharing cars in the state.
The federal government has issued no fatwas forbidding the testing of automated cars on public roads in any state.
There is even a move afoot to eliminate the possibility of human control – well, of control by us – via the removal of brake pedals and steering wheels altogether. (The cars will be controlled by the software and such, which will be controlled by the corporate-government nexus.)
But we are not allowed to decide whether to wear seatbelts in our cars.
Other automated things – airplanes, for instance – are required to have fallback/redundant controls on the theory that being helpless inside a powerful fast-moving machine that might just run into something because of a sensor malfunction, software hiccup or hardware degradation is not . . .what’s the word?
Safe.
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Things go awry. They also wear out. Sometimes, they just don’t work. About a week ago, I was test driving the new Mazda6 (reviewed here) which has (like many new cars) automated cruise control and automated braking.
Luckily, the car also still has a brake pedal. Lucky, because it snowed – and the snow and ice covered the sensors built into the car’s nose, which were thus no longer able to sense anything. But my sensors – my eyes – still worked. So did my right foot. Using both, I was able to see the need to brake – and did so.
If the car had been fully automated, it would not have stopped – and there would have been nothing I could have done about it.
Except scream.
Would you board a self-flying airplane without a pilot sitting in the left seat, just in case? How often does your cell phone or laptop do something buggy? Would you like to be riding either at 70 MPH when that happens, without any way to intervene?
The government thinks this is okay – when it comes to four-wheeled cell phones.
