Quote:
Originally Posted by TAZ4ate0
If you would only be referring to surface street engineering, I could agree somewhat. There are tons if death traps on city streets and even rural roads, but generally, those are low speed. Otherwise, interstates and freeways built to higher speed standards are built with a ton of safety designs in mind....including a set speed.We aren't building the autobahn here.
To say poor traffic engineering, especially freeways, in general kills people is just wrong. No, people kill other people,or, themselves by poor driving habits by speed, distractions such as texting etc, and impaired driving....and a laundry list of other things....ie improper maintenance on their vehicles to name one. Human stupidity is mostly to blame.
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Road engineering has progressed very little in the same amount of time that car technology has made leaps and bounds. So, I think Sean has a point about roads being at least part of the problem. I can't drive in certain lanes around Phoenix because my tires get caught in the asphalt seams which makes my car squirrely. I mean how hard could it be to close up those seams? Also, lanes can get notoriously narrow as Phoenix and other cities try to squeeze in an additional lane at the expense of reduced lane width and no shoulder. I have seen many accidents created by these problems. But I will agree lack of attention/distraction is the main cause of accidents.
But let's get serious here for a sec...40 years ago, everyone predicted 90% of drivers would have an electric car or even a flying car by now. Yet, Prius, Volt, Tesla and any other electric cars account for about 25% of total car sales on the road and there are no flying cars. So, I take self-driving cars with a grain of salt. I think 30 years from now, we will have about the same ratio of around 25% for self-drivers. I think it won't be as accepted as people think it will be. There's also the costs. A self-driver is simply going to be too expensive for Joe Average to afford and also how much is it going to be to repair these when they are out of warranty? How dangerous will they be when someone can't get one fixed out of warranty and still try to drive it or are they going to go into some kind of lock mode to keep them from being driven if a side camera fails? I can repair the majority of stuff on my car myself saving me money, but what the heck am I going to do if one of those spinning cameras break? I will gamble the vast majority of drivers aren't going to know a thing about these self driving cars or how to fix them without putting down a serious chunk of change.
But I don't know. Maybe the federal government will mandate certain things to have extended warranties and stuff. I haven't really followed the self-driver market too much, so these are just my own concerns. I just don't see these vehicles being available for a very long time to the average money-maker.
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I welcome this change and can't wait to take delivery of my Model 3 in the next 3-6 weeks.
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