“This was not reckless driving. This was murder,” the judge said before she read out Mackenzie Shirilla’s verdict Monday afternoon.

    • @visak
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      310 months ago

      Not the cars themselves but I think it’ll happen like this: self driving cars will eventually get good enough that they will have a lower accident rate in certain conditions, like highways. Insurance companies will push for self-driving-only lanes on the highway, while not lowering your rates but charging you extra for manual driving. Then it will be segments of highways, then certain surface streets, etc. Eventually you’ll only be driving the “last mile” if it’s a personal car or relying on a service that sends self-driving cars and drops you off on the corner. Manual driving on public streets will mostly disappear.

    • @havokdj
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      -510 months ago

      Not to mention that self driving cars will be the destruction of the environment.

      If you don’t want to drive, try to use public transportation or possibly human powered vehicles such as bicycles. Cars are bad enough as is. The only reason I even drive is to go to work and the grocery store in my town with basically no public transportation other than taxis.

      • @[email protected]
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        710 months ago

        I have no clue how you came to the conclusion that self driving cars would be more harmful to the environment than human driven ones, but even if the number of cars on the road remained the sane (it would actually drastically decrease), and even if all self driving cars were ICEs, vehicle emissions would still drastically stop.

        If every car was self driving, then every car would know the position of every other car around it and be able to communicate to every other car. Traffic jams would cease to exist, and potentially even stopping at intersections would go away too.

        But, the reality is that once self driving cars reach that critical mass, owning a car won’t be a thing anymore. You’ll pay a service to shuttle you around. Hell, if the service was a public utility then it would be trivial to set up ride sharing for a reduced rate. That would be what drastically decreases the amount of cars on the road.

        • @havokdj
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          -110 months ago

          Because self driving cars would allow people who otherwise couldn’t drive for themselves to own yet another car on the road. Teenagers, elderly, people with chronic alcohol addiction, you get the idea.

          I don’t fully buy the “no traffic jams or accidents” thing either. There is definitely the potential for there to be less, but what you are talking about is something that isn’t going to happen for ateast another decade. Surely you remember the Tesla crisis from the last year?

          I can see ride sharing becoming a thing for the people under the poverty line, but realistically speaking, everyone is going to buy a car. There is no incentive for a billions of dollars company to put less cars on the road using ride sharing, some of them already sell you heated seats in the form of a monthly subscription.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            You’re making the mistake of applying the behavior of people today with the behavior of people over a decade from now.

            Truly autonomous vehicles would fundamentally change the way the world views transportation, it will just take a while to get to that point.

            By the time we get to a critical mass of self driving cars, it’s very likely that owning cars won’t be a thing outside of the wealthy.

            The organizations that will be running the transportation services will have a vested interest in keeping as few vehicles in a fleet as possible, thus removing vehicles from the road (if we haven’t reached that point by the time self driving cars are a real thing)

            Also the idea that the people who couldn’t otherwise own a car would suddenly have $50k+ to go out and buy an autonomous vehicle is silly.

            • @havokdj
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              -110 months ago

              Paying attention to trends is not a mistake, and if anything, consumerism has ramped up much higher over the past few decades, steadily rising even through the great recession.

              Yes the cost of living has gone up, but there are fallacies in your argument.

              • If only the wealthy can afford to buy self driving cars, that does not remove regular cars from the road, if anything regular cars would likely wind up becoming cheaper, potentially putting MORE cars on the road.

              • I agree with the point of organizations, but keep in mind I only agree when it comes to mass public transportation, such as a bus, or a train. The idea of having a car potentially driving a single occupant is incredibly wasteful.

              • Why are you assuming that the types of people I mentioned cannot afford a $50k vehicle? Those are people who are not inherently broke, they just do not typically have driving privileges. Even then, you are aware that most people do not outright buy a car, correct? Most people finance a vehicle over the course of several years, doing so otherwise is uncommon and dealerships actually hate when you do this because it cuts heavily into their profits because a dealership is essentially a car loanshark supermarket.