Posted on 03/20/2018 1:20:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: I mentioned that there’s the first known, first reported fatality involving an autonomously driven car. It was an Uber car. It was in Arizona. An Arizona pedestrian was killed. And because of this, Uber has halted testing of its autonomous vehicles all across North America, including San Francisco, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and a number of others have canceled theirs too.
And, you know, it’s fascinating, folks, to read liberal blogs about this. As you know, I spend time on the tech blogs. And the tech blogs are populated by young Millennial leftist journalists. And while they hate Uber for one reason, they don’t like the CEO and his mistreatment of women. But on the other hand they love Uber ’cause it’s high-tech, it’s software, it’s automatic driving investigations or experimentation.
Now, what happened in this case, there was a human being acting as backup, so there was a human being in the car. The car was tooling along, and a woman, according to the cops, darted out in front of the car from shadow. She was in a median between lanes, and she was not in a crosswalk. Now, that’s important because the software for one of these autonomously software driven cars, the crosswalk would have been programmed into it, and it would have had a sensor, sensitivity.
The woman darted out, and the investigators, the cops said it wouldn’t have mattered if the human being in the car had total control over it, this woman would have not been missed. Nobody would have had a reaction time quick enough to avoid hitting her. So the autonomous driving car has been exonerated from any blame in the death. So I’m reading my tech blogs on this and the tech blogs are urging caution, and let’s not rush to judgment. People die every day. We can’t be hasty in our condemnation of this marvelous new technology, driverless automobiles.
And all I could think of, if this woman had been killed by a gun, would these same tech bloggers have expressed caution and said let’s not rush to judgment here, or would they be on a tear today? And, in fact, one of the tech bloggers pointed out, “Hey, we gotta keep things in perspective. There are 50,000 people a year killed in automobile accidents,” as though this is just one of them. Isn’t any big deal. But wait a minute. I thought it was life that was precious.
So is it 50,000 people killed one way or another involving automobiles every year — well, we’ll look past that. I mean, we’re not gonna ban the wheel, and we’re not gonna ban the car, and we’re not gonna blame AAA. But let there be a gun involved, they throw all that out and they become banshees on the warpath to get rid of every gun in the world. And yet they’ll sit by and acknowledge 50,000 people, hundred people a week die in car crashes, so let’s keep this in perspective. And I thought, what a bunch of hypocrites.
‘Cause the point is, we cannot allow this masterful new technology, driverless automobiles, we cannot allow it to be sidetracked. We cannot allow it to be delayed. We cannot permit it being harmed in any way because it’s the future. So in certain cases, a random death here, a random death there, that’s just the cost of doing business. But when a gun’s involved, why, we gotta go out and get rid of the Second Amendment. We gotta disband the NRA. We gotta put the chairman of the NRA in jail. Amazing hypocrisy.
Anyway, the cops said it was not the car’s fault; it was not the software’s fault. It was the woman’s fault. She jumped out in front of the car. Nobody would have been able to stop it.
As one gun banner told me: “You need a car. You don’t need a gun.”
Good thing that Uber car wasn’t an SUV. ;)
Man, I used to LOVE how Rush would point that out at EVERY opportunity. It was the SUV, not the driver, at fault!
It’s the gun, not the shooter, at fault!
Liberals are such fools.
In multiple threads on the topic we have people defending Trump hating Uber, saying little old lady at fault, too dark, too little time, she was pedestrian "not in crosswalk", etc. But consider a few things:
Okay, lunch break over. I've always been an opponent of driverless cars being developed and tested on our streets. Using us, the public, as live guinea pigs for there experimentation. I wonder when the first time a terrorist loads one with explosives and sends it to its destination; or a family puts their kids in one to go to school and it is involved in an accident and no adult or parent is there; or someone hacks it and redirects your wife or daughter to an unintended destination; or it takes you through an undesirable no-go area of down and is stopped or breaks down, etc. Oh, yeah, what was the problem they are trying to fix?
Autonomous vehicles will not survive First Contact
with the American Tort Bar.
You heard it here first.
She wasn’t murdered by the car. She dashed out from the shadows right in front of the car. It was her own fault.
“Guns don’t kill people - Ubers kill people”
In a perfect roboworld the Auto-Uber-Auto would have hit her, processed her, cooked her and then served her up to the homeless and hungry at the passenger’s destination and her relatives would have been awarded a Humanitarian Compassion Medal for her sacrifice.
The answer to this is easy. They want to remove you from the decision making process. At first, the 'driverless' cars will be voluntary. Slowly, over time there will be few and fewer places where you are allowed to actually drive by yourself, as opposed to having your movements being controlled by the government, (which is exactly where all of this is heading).
You keep using the word "murder." Murder implies intent and/or pre-meditation. This was not murder. It was a homicide.
Automous vehicles are an 80/20 90/10 problem....
80-90% of the effort will be in the final 10-20% of the problem...
The fact that you don’t have autonomous trucks or busses doing interstate runs, shows you just how far away we are from autonomous vehicles..
The interstate run is a far simpler problem... All traffic is flowing in the same direction, no cross traffic, etc etc... Yet, here we are NOT having anything autonomous doing this yet, they are driving cars around metropolitan areas... This stuff is being oversold folks.. its not there yet, not by a long shot.
Yes, accidents happen every day, and will continue to happen even with autonomous vehicles, however, the bill of sale that we are on the verge of autonomous vehicles for the masses is complete BS.
Its being overhyped and over sold... its got a LOT more baking to do. I do hope they get it done, particularly so older and visually or otherwise disabled individuals may have the same freedom of movement the rest of us enjoy. I certainly do not want to think of the day when I am old and must give up my car...
But this accident or not, the tech is not remotely there yet...
Committed suicide by car? I had a girlfriend once use that excuse to explain running over a squirrel or cat or something on the road.
May I ask why you are so quick to blame here and excuse the car and technology? I'm very pro-tech in so many ways, but I also think these cars should not be on the roads. The police said further investigation is in order, Uber says their are preparing for expected criminal charges, and the NTSB is just starting their investigation. Yet, you've already dismissed it all. Odd.
I see your point, but you are not looking at the big picture. The big picture is quite simple when you're thinking of these 'driverless' vehicles. It is simply a matter of control and who has it. You can bet your bottom dollar that before it's all over it is the government that will have every bit of that control. Do you honestly think they'd let anyone stop a power grab like that?
If driverless cars killed 20,000 people per year, it would still be a big improvement over the 50,000 or so killed by drivers. Wehave to keep in mind that the current technology kills too.
>>The answer to this is easy. They want to remove you from the decision making process. At first, the ‘driverless’ cars will be voluntary. Slowly, over time there will be few and fewer places where you are allowed to actually drive by yourself, as opposed to having your movements being controlled by the government, (which is exactly where all of this is heading). <<
Just like GPS trackers sold as conveniences but actually opening you up to be followed anywhere.
I am OK with driverless cars, but I do fear the scenario you paint.
Dittoes, Rush. Mega-Dittoes.
“If driverless cars killed 20,000 people per year, it would still be a big improvement over the 50,000 or so killed by drivers. Wehave to keep in mind that the current technology kills too.”
If the 20,000 die but there is no one who is liable? Then no. It is not ‘better’. Current auto deaths have established legal tools for establishing liability. The current technology does very little of the killing. It is rare that a vehicular death is ruled as being the fault of the vehicle itself.
>>>Why do we have driverless cars on our streets?
Because half the drivers you encounter on your drive are below average (and they all assume it’s the other guy).
Right now it is a great topic of conversation. No politics. Well, not much.
Did the car kill her? Did she commit suicide by car? Is it simply her fault?
I am bothered that the police said initial review of the video saw her, saw her crossing the street. Then next they ran her down with out slowing or breaking. I'm sorry, but I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles over the years and when I see something down the road, especially at night, I watch out for it--so far have never hit a deer, for example. Or a kid. Or a little old lady walking her bike across the street.
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