this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Aside from driving being an activity that, in my opinion, will require something approaching AGI, there are other issues to consider. Self driving cars will be completely unable to make difficult decisions reliably. How, for example, do they deal with a robbery where you just have someone stand in front of the car to immobilize it and then have the folks inside the car at your mercy? I have to imagine that either you're producing pedestrian murder machines or serving up passengers on a silver platter.
My concept of self driving cars has always been external navigation from a grid.
An individual car self driving is useless for all of these reasons mentioned. However, a self driving car that is controlled as part of a wider grid? Now we're talking. You input your destination and relative to everything currently on the road you are moved. If a wider issue like a meteor comes in, the grid goes down and traffic stops safely. If someone tries to game the system by standing in front of a car, the grid has control of the other vehicles as well. Some other benefits could be redesigning the use of tires for fewer microplastics, and there would have to weigh out the difference of gas vs. electricity costs. Ideally, each vehicle is powered by the grid so no more gas stations, but electricity comes from somewhere, so unless we move towards renewables then it may not have less emissions.
Obviously the drawback to this is the insane privacy imposition of the grid controlling where you go. The infrastructure would also be likely impossible as it would be the grid and the vehicles. But, if we were going to do it I feel like this would be on track towards the right way.
Now that I'm grown, I feel like a more feasible version of this is this sort of grid for local busses, as well as trucking and long-distance travel (aka trains) and getting local towns and cities to focus more on walkability. This works towards solving the problem of getting fewer vehicles on the road while not limiting people's freedom to travel. Unfortunately it's the same problem of infrastructure and no one will invest in this.