Self driving cars and moral decisions-who will live, who will die?

My car should protect ME. It should hit whichever target is less likely to injure the occupant. Anything else reflects personal or cultural bias and is inappropriate.

So, with 3 "target" choices,

1 - Hard, immovable object. Your car absorbs full impact. 2 - Moderately crushable object. 50/50 split. 3 - Soft, deformable object. Target absorbs full impact.

You would choose to run down the group of Nuns escorting children in a school crosswalk. Thank you for being such a wonderful Human Being. Where do you live? I need to remember not to go there.

The question is moot since I will never involve myself with a self-driving car.

Trusting a machine to make hard moral decisions is stupid. Suppose there were TWO groups of nuns and children? What about a group of Girl Scouts? What if they were Boy Scouts? What if they were prisoners being escorted to the courthouse for arraignment?

Assuming the nuns were actually competent to protect children, they would NOT step out into the crosswalk until they saw no cars unlikely to be able to stop in time. Physics is a real bitch sometimes, and god doesn't suspend her laws just because someone goes to church a lot.

you won't have a choice once they become widespread. they're already on the road in some cities.

My Corolla will last forever. Unless gasoline engines and human drivers are outlawed I'll never have to be the occupant of a self-driving car.

On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 10:51:17 AM UTC-10, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wr ote:

That's not really a big problem. Mostly, it's a red herring and an expressi on of fear of new technology. Personally, I don't want to know the algorith ms a computer will use to avoid an accident. My guess is that a computer wi ll be better able to handle an emergency situation better than I ever could . I will be safer and the other people outside the car will be safer with t his technology. That's the bottom line. The bottom line is a good line.

dilemmas

yep.

no it won't. nothing lasts forever.

that's very foolish. autonomous vehicles will be much safer than ones driven by humans, which sadly, is not particularly difficult.

drunk driving, texting, driver inattention, fatigue, etc., will all be a thing of the past.

and if you call a taxi, uber, lyft, airport shuttle, etc., there's an ever increasing chance that what arrives will be autonomous. uber is already testing that.

Not forever, but damned long is certainly possible. I've been driving the same car for over 40 years.

that's the very rare exception, not the rule, and you know it.

That's not so easy with a Toyota. I had a '78 Corolla SR5 and wound up junking it when I could no longer get even routine parts for it.

On the other hand, any parts you need for a Model A you can get off the shelf with a short lead time.

It's a weird world that we live in.

--scott

At the moment the average car in the U.S. is over a decade old. That means that many are older.

Anyone can make a car last for decades if they have a mind to. It helps to start with a vehicle that is durable to begin with.

I can see where older foreign cars might be a problem to get parts for. It's common to still find parts on the shelf for decades-old U.S. iron. Heck, I know people daily-driving cars older than mine.

what matters is the distribution, not the average.

your 40 year old vehicle is an outlier. very few cars on the road today are anywhere near that old.

they can, but there's little point in that unless it's a classic car that will hold its value.

newer cars are *much* safer, more economical, more comfortable and far less likely to need a repair leaving one stranded.

in any event, the original point was that nothing lasts forever, and it doesn't.

The point is economical motoring, not going into debt slavery for new vehicles, and having a vehicle you can easily repair yourself without the need for a lot of specialized equipment.

I've never broken down to the point where I could not easily get going again using simple hand tools. Comfort is a judgement call, but there are plenty of older cars that are quite comfortable. (I'm perfectly happy with mine.) Lower gas mileage is more than made up for by not spending may thousands of dollars on new vehicles, and having 3-point belts, side impact beams, and padded dash are safe enough for me.

A point which is meaningless. The earth and sun will not last forever either, but that is not an immediate concern. You can make a car last a very long time in terms of a human lifetime. See Cuba for an extreme example.

+1 All my 1965 cars save me from safety, pollution controls, chinese electronics and incessant lights and beeps. Add 'no autonomy' and I'm in! Plus, exempt from seat belt citations.

From your posts, I've always known that you (plural) were mouth breathing, knuckle dragging Luddites. Thanx for the continuing verification.

Again, it depends. I had a Chrysler Laser, which was a curious vehicle that I kind of liked, but I couldn't get CV joints for the thing and had to get them custom. Chrysler couldn't even get distributor caps for it; they had the caps in stock if you knew the number but the dealer database was screwed up and didn't list the right cap.

After ten years the manufacturer doesn't really care about supporting the vehicle. If parts are common to many years, you can likely get them if you can figure out what they are. If it's a popular car that people want to keep running, there's likely aftermarket support and plenty of aftermarket parts available. Otherwise... maybe not.

--scott

very, very few people repair their own vehicles, and the types of repairs an older vehicle will need are often beyond their skill set, such as an engine rebuild, transmission overhaul, body work, etc. those repairs are also not cheap and will cost more than what the vehicle is worth, and in many cases, parts are not available, making repairs not possible.

that doesn't mean others haven't. an older vehicle is more likely to have an unexpected breakdown than a newer one. very simple.

there are, but newer vehicles more so.

as opposed to many thousands of dollars on repairs for the older vehicle.

but not for others.

newer vehicles have airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, attention alert, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance radar and limited autonomy. when full autonomy becomes common, they'll be even safer.

you can, but there's no good reason to do so.

at some point, the cost to repair and maintain it is more than the value of the vehicle, at which point replacement is a better choice.