Smart guns - survey... sort of

[ExciteBike66]

25. I agree in part

"Truly autonomous technology for close human contact is no where near ready for prime time."

I agree totally with this statement. That said, google is convincing me more and more every day that the day of automation is almost here.


"The speed limit is 5 as far as the car knows. Driving up the shoulder at 5 along a highway with traffic going 50-85 is dangerous. Sitting on the shoulder is also dangerous. Making someone wait and pay for a tow truck because an otherwise driveable car has a brainfart is rather unpopular. "

Also true, although I presumed the person would only drive until the next exit, and thus the journey at "5" would not be very long. Furthermore, if everyone else on the highway is also automated, and are not experiencing a malfunction, at least driving on the side would be relatively safer than it would be today with human drivers.

Perhaps the car can be put into some sort of "limp-mode" that is faster than 5 mph. My point is that I wouldn't want "limp-mode" to be able to go very fast, or else folks might just drive around in "limp-mode" without the benefit of automation, thus making the whole system worthless. Perhaps the system will allow driving at a limited speed if one pushes the "Hazard Lights" button.

I would expect that the benefits of automation would be such as to make us want to force every car to be automated, eventually. Kind of like how airbags are now required.