Around 100 people a day die in car wrecks. The vast overwhelming majority are driver inattention, irresponsible levels of speeding, aggression, distraction, drowsy, drunk, etc. Automation ends the ones where people slam into parked cars, drift off into the oncoming lanes. blow through red lights, etc. Automation deals successfully with nearly all of these. The few failures won’t be 10% of the human failures. But we all hear about aunt Bee who claims her new car confuses her.
There is no better feeling than driving your 1970 BMW 2002, or your convertible Mustang on a mountain road, shifting gears, windows or top down. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you are safer. We would all laugh at an engineering firm that refused to use computers and did everything with paper and pencil. But in cars, everyone is convinced they have the focus of a panther and the reflexes and fast thinking mind of a 23 year old fighter pilot.
The truth is out there.
Gotta run, there is simply too much Luddite ignorance on the thread to address beyond that.
“There is no better feeling than driving your 1970 BMW 2002, or your convertible Mustang on a mountain road, shifting gears, windows or top down.”
You haven’t driven my 2019 Mustang!
Lol. Well said DR.
As an example, I had an accident caused by an ABS doing its job as designed. One wheel was on a steel plate in wet weather, the others on pavement with good traction. The ABS system prevented the three good wheels from stopping the car and I slid into the car in front of me at about 7 mph. Did a lot of damage for what would not have been an accident without ABS. One wheel properly braking would have stopped the car.
I have slid down roads in white knuckle rides in winter with ABS when, again, one good wheel with some small amount of traction would stop the car.
For those of us not driving 140 mph on the Autobahn and needing to brake while going around a curve, It's a stupid concept and a stupid design.
Smart engineers know that the world is a lot more complex than anyone can predict. It's the second level down who think they are a lot smarter than all the rest of us who get us all into trouble.
“Luddite ignorance”
I tend to think anyone who believes technology can save man fro himself is of childish ignorance.