Althouse: The problem with driverless cars is that they don't make mistakes.

June 30, 2025

The problem with driverless cars is that they don't make mistakes.

OK, this is an original and good point.

pic.twitter.com/CmAHI9fUnr
— Bojan Tunguz (@tunguz) June 29, 2025

94 comments:

Kai Akker said...: I see in one brief flash, like lightning, that you make another point in a sentence under your headline, AA. But the video covers it completely and I would never know there was something else. Doubt you mean to have subliminal messaging, but, at least for me, you do.; 6/30/25, 7:50 AM
Achilles said...: Going to make car insurance a thing of the past. A lot of money tied up in that gig.

But nothing about the insurance industry was really about money. The people that own those businesses have so much money the income was pointless. They made more off a fraction of the interest.

The whole purpose of Car Insurance was to make cars less affordable for poor people.

Now there is a world where the government owns all of the cars so insurance will be vestigial.

One of the reasons they are going after Musk is he is making sure the car fleet is owned by people.; 6/30/25, 7:53 AM
Aggie said...: Insurance is a financial service, a confidence game in the virtual world. Anybody thinking that financial services are going the way of the dodo as technology advances, is at least one step behind the financial services people, who are two steps ahead of the general population.; 6/30/25, 7:59 AM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: This is true at the moment. But I can think of three ways to reduce and maybe eliminate this behavior right off the top of my head. The more frightening example at the moment is of a man standing in front of a woman's car until she gives him her number. Or worse. But it's solvable.; 6/30/25, 8:07 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Driverless cars also can't make good judgement decisions about how to go with the flow. They will create endless problems and frustrations for human drivers. Almost nobody always goes the speed limit, for example. Those who do create a hazard. So do those who insist that their cruise control is in charge. Every driverless car will be like another really old person on the road or a Subaru with Wisconsin plates.; 6/30/25, 8:09 AM
rehajm said...: He’s mostly* correct and his example should be extrapolated to include people with nefarious motives. Of course his is but one example.

*Waymos DO make mistakes, not in executing instructions but because their instructions are written by humans. Here’s the one just going in circles while the lawyer licks his chops. It’s the lawyers what will kill them…; 6/30/25, 8:09 AM
JAORE said...: If he's not bright enough to figure a path to solving this problem, he's not bright enough for me to listen to him.; 6/30/25, 8:12 AM
n.n said...: The problem with MI is that it is neither discerning nor creative.; 6/30/25, 8:12 AM
rehajm said...: Almost nobody always goes the speed limit, for example

Kim Java and others have observed Robotaxis speeding and committing other traffic violations. When an autonomous gets pulled over who gets the ticket? Are they programmed to pull over? Of course these are just beta and ALL the bugs will be worked out in future updates. Of course…; 6/30/25, 8:14 AM
Kirk Parker said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/30/25, 8:18 AM
Kirk Parker said...: Achilles, your comment makes no sense: insurance long, long predates the invention of the internal combustion engine and the subsequent rise of personally driven motor cars.; 6/30/25, 8:19 AM
Eva Marie said...: Driverless cars don’t work? We’ve had Waymo here in the Phoenix area for quite a while and they work just fine. What is this gentleman talking about? According to Grok we have about 1000 of them - which surprises me because I thought we had more. I see several of them every day. Many people prefer them to Uber.; 6/30/25, 8:19 AM
Achilles said...: Aggie said...
Insurance is a financial service, a confidence game in the virtual world. Anybody thinking that financial services are going the way of the dodo as technology advances, is at least one step behind the financial services people, who are two steps ahead of the general population.

As he says Insurance was just another form of hedge fund.

But it was a hedge fund that was used in particularly nasty ways to damage society.

They are going to try to find some way to make sure the little people cannot own their own car.; 6/30/25, 8:19 AM
D.D. Driver said...: Remember when he said Asians are good at math because they worked in rice paddies?; 6/30/25, 8:20 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Driverless cars! Hooray! Now we just need hiking boots that can go for a hike by themselves so I can sit and look at my fucking phone some more.; 6/30/25, 8:23 AM
Achilles said...: Kirk Parker said...
Achilles, your comment makes no sense: insurance long, long predates the invention of the internal combustion engine and the subsequent rise of personally driven motor cars.

Car insurance didn't.

To understand my point think about what "insurance" does to our health care industry.

It most certainly has nothing to do with "access."

Just like car insurance today has nothing to do with "affordability."; 6/30/25, 8:24 AM
FormerLawClerk said...: Waymo and Tesla cannot operate profitably in the United States because the US is a low-trust state.

They will make trillions in China and Japan. Because those people are civilized and if you happen to be one of the uncivilized ones, they just erase you.

Nobody in Japan locks their doors.; 6/30/25, 8:33 AM
Gerda Sprinchorn said...: Malcolm, as usual, is taking a small point and blowing it up using low-key hysteria.

His concern is real, but small, and things will evolve. Waymos will find a way to get more aggressive with soccer players on 42nd street while not killing them. Maybe the Waymos will subtly learn how to wreck the soccer game. Society will curb this in various ways, scorn from onlookers, mocking by TV comedies, etc.

Malcolm-style hysteria usually requires that the rest of the world remain inert in these situations.; 6/30/25, 8:34 AM
Kirk Parker said...: Bob Boyd,

> Almost nobody always
> goes the speed limit

Well, there's an inherent ambiguity there, in practice. Have you ever seen a speed limit sign that specified whether it was the maximum or the minimum limit? Me neither.; 6/30/25, 8:34 AM
Space City Girl said...: MG is a contrarian who often has good observations. This is not one of them. With driverless cars, death and dismemberment by autos will be a thing of the past.We can figure out the minor issue that MG is “fretting” about.; 6/30/25, 8:35 AM
FormerLawClerk said...: What stops a gang of tire thieves from standing in front of a Waymo, jacking it up, and removing its tires, while it is running?

In many countries the answer is that the law would protect the vehicle. Nobody would harm it because if they did, there would be immediate negative repercussions and through Pavlovian repetition the society becomes high trust.

But in the United States, this rule doesn't work, largely because of certain people, who are responsible for the vast majority of crime in the United States on a scale so large that it would bankrupt the country if we tried to prosecute and jail all of them. So our society is low to no-trust.; 6/30/25, 8:37 AM
FormerLawClerk said...: We’ve had Waymo here in the Phoenix area for quite a while and they work just fine until you need to protest the Jews or globalize the intifada or whatever bullshit George Soros and his minions are up to this week. Then they tend to catch on fire spontaneously and gum up the intersections.; 6/30/25, 8:39 AM
Wince said...: Whatever happened to “tank guy” in Tiananmen Square?; 6/30/25, 8:40 AM
Yancey Ward said...: "We can figure out the minor issue that MG is “fretting” about."

Can we? Just the one specific issue he raised- how do we do it? It is already hard to keep a street/road clear for traffic in a protest environment. How much harder will it be if protestors no longer have to worry about getting run over? Driver-less cars will be force multiplier for such protests since it makes blocking a road much, much easier with far less resources at each point.; 6/30/25, 8:42 AM
gilbar said...: when in doubt, they stop or slow down..
Now think about an expressway with all (or most) driverless cars?
something happens.. a deer, a bag, a glint of sun..
one car slams on its brakes.. and what happens next?
EVERY other car slams on its brakes; and soon they're ALL stopped.

But HEY! you say; "that will SAVE LIVES!"
it SURE WILL, except that people will die of old age in their cars.
when in doubt, they stop or slow down..
The Problem IS: there's LOTS of things to doubt; 6/30/25, 8:43 AM
gilbar said...: "The people that own those businesses"

i worked Most of my life for a mutual company.
Achilles? could you explain to me who you think owns mutual companies?; 6/30/25, 8:46 AM
Leland said...: What he calls a mistake seems to be what allows the system to work as intended.

In Houston, we had a lady get out of her car on a major freeway and sit in a lawn chair holding a gun. Nobody ran over her. The police eventually got her to calm down, got her treatment, and released her without charges. The drivers recognized she wasn't a protestor and was just having a bad day. If she had run out into traffic holding a Palestinian or Mexico flag shouting at drivers; they wouldn't have made a mistake.; 6/30/25, 8:47 AM
ronetc said...: Agree with Kai Akker at first post of day: "I see in one brief flash, like lightning, that you make another point in a sentence under your headline, AA. But the video covers it completely and I would never know there was something else."; 6/30/25, 8:47 AM
narciso said...: the problem is probably more with the driven cars, but I'm not ready for the mult-ilanes of minority report yet; 6/30/25, 8:52 AM
Ficta said...: Kai Akker and ronetc: That flash of text you see is the text of the twitter post (tweet, whatever), not Althouse's words. Click "Watch on X" to read it. Embedded Twitter (X) posts with video do that, i.e. obliterate the words and just show the video. It used to drive me crazy too until I figured out what was going on.; 6/30/25, 8:55 AM
Tina Trent said...: Insurance is a pain in the ass. But when a critical mass carry fake -- ie. unresponsive -- insurance (illegals and those who employ them, overwhelmingly), then get back to me when you lose your house as your daughter is permamently strapped to a wheelchair screaming pejoratives and trying to masturbate because a bunch of illegals in a concrete truck shredded her brain, and there's no recourse because they fled the scene.

Or when two Chinese people on green cards bollock up who was driving so much that the law-abiding citizens can't get justice.

Or when someone gets five DUIs averted.

Fix the illegals and recidivist empathy problem and you fix 90% of the problems of driving safety. We don't need new types of cars. We need to expel and punish the wrong types of humans.; 6/30/25, 8:58 AM
narciso said...: if AIs have learned to lie, like HAL, and cannot be shut off like
Skynet's Anthropic, well I'm not reassured,; 6/30/25, 9:02 AM
WisRich said...: Well, there is the option of turning off the auto-pilot and drive the car yourself.; 6/30/25, 9:05 AM
CJinPA said...: "CAR!"

The most common sound heard during a city street hockey game.; 6/30/25, 9:06 AM
bagoh20 said...: It's a computer. You can program it to be as bad as you want.
We need bad drivers. What about municipal income lost when no tickets get issued? This really is a disruptive technology!; 6/30/25, 9:09 AM
narciso said...: wait till they go maximum overdrive, who thought that could happen,; 6/30/25, 9:10 AM
Eva Marie said...: I must live in an alternate universe. We have had Waymo here for several years and they WORK JUST FINE. Why is everyone horrblizing a future event when that it is already here and . . . IT WORKS JUST FINE.; 6/30/25, 9:12 AM
narciso said...: they do, they think kamala is president, but i'm concerned about increasingly unethical ais,; 6/30/25, 9:16 AM
Ampersand said...: Amen. Eva Marie.; 6/30/25, 9:17 AM
rehajm said...: I must live in an alternate universe.

Yup.; 6/30/25, 9:18 AM
Peachy said...: Denver metro report: After Democratic De-fund the police - it's a free-for-all on our highways. I never see a police car - anywhere, ever. Traffic fatalities are up, road rage is up, speeding, weaving and general reckless driving are up.
Motorcycles drive fast in between lanes.... etc..

Self-driving cars do not drive like that.; 6/30/25, 9:20 AM
bagoh20 said...: I quit drinking last year, but last Friday I made an exception on my short ride home from work with a fellow employee. We grabbed a couple beers, and at a stop light we cracked them open, did a cheer and immediately after that first sip, I was rear ended. Of course, I'm thinking I'm screwed with an open container. The guy immediately took responsibility, gave me his information and didn't even ask for mine. I drive a pickup with a tow hitch that destroyed his grill, but did no damage to my truck. We shook hands and left. I got nothing to claim, but it was refreshing to see someone take responsibility like that.; 6/30/25, 9:20 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: So this isn’t an article about the first new car to drive itself to its buyer?; 6/30/25, 9:21 AM
Iman said...: Malcom Gladwell?

Ye gods!; 6/30/25, 9:37 AM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: I would like to see how long it takes a driverless car to navigate Harvard Square around noon. But of course it could be programmed to go around rather than through Harvard Square. It could also stop on the edge of Harvard Square and tell you to get out and walk.

Adaptive cruise control has created a lot more semi-driverless cars on the highway than one might realize. I set mine about 10 to 15 miles above the speed limit and it does just fine going with the traffic flow.; 6/30/25, 9:45 AM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: There is also the potential for the driverless cars to communicate with one another. Take the problem of how many cars can get through an intersection with a stop light.

If all the cars in line are driverless and in communication, they can all accelerate at the same time rather than one at a time, allowing more cars to get through before the light turns red.

Also, a line of cars could communicate with the stop light to adjust how long the light stays green based on the length of the line relative the the cross traffic, the number of drivers turning left, etc.; 6/30/25, 9:51 AM
Achilles said...: WisRich said...
Well, there is the option of turning off the auto-pilot and drive the car yourself.

Not for long.

Someone is going to turn off autopilot and run over a child and some point.

Unless we have reconsidered the 19th amendment then a critical mass of people will not have developed a strong enough moral code to resist the government banning human drivers.; 6/30/25, 10:02 AM
gspencer said...: Here it is, four days after the opinion. Why is that oddball Ketanji Onyika, both for her name and her thinking, still on the Court?; 6/30/25, 10:05 AM
Eva Marie said...: What if someone invented a saw that stopped working when it encountered human flesh? O no! Then all the kids would be putting their fingers in front of the blade and no one could get any work done. Terrible idea! Bad for the insurance industry! Except it’s been around for 20 years now. In my universe anyway.
Let me just add: This Malcolm Gladwell character is upset that Waymo stops and doesn’t run over people? That’s what he’s upset about? The horrors of modern technology.; 6/30/25, 10:08 AM
Rocco said...: Kirk Parker said...
“Well, there's an inherent ambiguity there, in practice. Have you ever seen a speed limit sign that specified whether it was the maximum or the minimum limit? Me neither.”

Very good point.

Back when the national limit was 55, we used to see joint Speed Limit / Minimum signs on the Interstates in Ohio. Max 55, min 40. But I haven’t seen one in ages.

Link: https://akronsafetylite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Speed-Limit-Speed-Minimum.png; 6/30/25, 10:08 AM
Jamie said...: I'm kind of looking forward to fully autonomous cars before my kids want to take away my keys. Give it twenty years or so and I trust all the bugs will be worked out.; 6/30/25, 10:15 AM
baghdadbob said...: Driverless cars open up very deep pockets as lawsuit targets. A person injured in a crash with a driverless Tesla can sue a company worth hundreds-of-billions, and likely win the suit, even though human error is the probable cause and the Tesla has no culpability. Lottery-minded jurors will look at Tesla as a bottomless piggy bank, deserving of a comeuppance. Because Musk bad. And too rich.; 6/30/25, 10:22 AM
Saint Croix said...: I like Malcolm Gladwell a lot. He's an idea man. I think I've read all of his books. Very interesting.

He embarrassed himself at the Munk debate, going up against Douglas Murray and Matt Taibbi.

This happened in Canada, and Jordan Peterson interviewed both Murray and Taibbi after the debate.

Murray and Peterson

Taibbi and Peterson

Gladwell's performance was so bad, even the liberals in the audience were appalled.

I still enjoy his books, though, and I'm sure I'll buy the next one. He's a real out-of-the-box thinker with an inquisitive mind.; 6/30/25, 10:30 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: It will change the car/pedestrian dynamics, ceding supremacy to pedestrians. Not necessarily a bad thing.; 6/30/25, 10:32 AM
Curious George said...: ""CAR!"

The most common sound heard during a city street hockey game."

Ha, yep.; 6/30/25, 10:34 AM
The Vault Dweller said...: Malcom Gladwell gives the example of automated cars being held hostage by kids playing games in the street, but what about other instances of groups of men blocking automated cars to drag the passengers out and rob them or worse?; 6/30/25, 10:41 AM
Achilles said...: The Vault Dweller said...
Malcom Gladwell gives the example of automated cars being held hostage by kids playing games in the street, but what about other instances of groups of men blocking automated cars to drag the passengers out and rob them or worse?

This scenario depends on several other societal mandates.

In the preferred society the passengers in the vehicle shoot the kidnappers and robbers and/or the kidnappers and robbers are incarcerated for the lesser crimes they always commit as they ramp up to murder and robbery.; 6/30/25, 10:52 AM
Keith said...: So his argument is ... if you run in front of a waymo it won't run you over? If you run in front of a car with a driver, is it supposed to run you over? Is that his point?; 6/30/25, 10:53 AM
Achilles said...: Gladwell is an unreconstructed racist as well.

He is for persecuting poor and middle class white people on behalf of his Marxist tribe.; 6/30/25, 11:04 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I see in one brief flash, like lightning, that you make another point in a sentence under your headline, AA. But the video covers it completely...."

My post is only a headline plus the video. If you see other text, you're previewing text that is at X and you can read it if you click through. It's not some mysterious device of mine. I'm choosing to display only the video. I thought the text wasn't interesting enough to display!; 6/30/25, 11:06 AM
Joe Bar said...: Gerda Sprinchorn said...
"Malcolm, as usual, is taking a small point and blowing it up using low-key hysteria."

Indeed, he does that a lot. I used to take him seriously, and listen to his podcast, but then, I found he missed a lot of things from viewpoint distortion. He's a smart and engaging guy, but there's always something that he just misses.

My big revelation was reading his work on the development and use of incendiaries during WWII. I know a little about the air campaign against Japan, and the personalities involved, and either Gladwell, or every other historian I have read, is wrong.; 6/30/25, 11:06 AM
Keith said...: I thought his book outliers was amazing. Until I looked into it. One of the first stories of outliers was the NHL. It seems that the age cutoff for Canadian youth hockey is such that - I'm mixing up the details - say the cutoff is January of any given year. The kids born in January vs the kids born in Dec are a year bigger and faster and at 5 that's a big difference. A 5-y vs a 6-y old. So the 6-y old dominates and is promoted. Then it's 6- vs 7-y olds. And so on. So eventually because of this trivial decision the NHL is dominated by people born in Jan and few born in Dec.

Wow. Amazing.

I looked it up. The NHL is divided about evenly in birthdays. There is no such skew. Since then - the ONE fact I could verify - turns out to be a lie, I have to assume the others that I cannot verify may not be true.; 6/30/25, 11:11 AM
Mary Beth said...: How fast does he run? Why wouldn't the car take off when he was behind it, before he had a chance to get in front again? How slow was it going to begin with that he could run along side, and then in front of it? This anecdote feels as truthful as his other stories - some, but not all.; 6/30/25, 11:12 AM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: Saint Croix said...

He embarrassed himself at the Munk debate, going up against Douglas Murray and Matt Taibbi.

Yes and it didn't help that Gladwell's partner was Michelle Goldberg.; 6/30/25, 11:12 AM
n.n said...: Ideally a hybrid model with the versatility of AI and the predictability of MI.; 6/30/25, 11:17 AM
bleh said...: He's using kids playing in the street as the example, but the real concern is just general disorder. People will stop waiting patiently at crosswalks for their light. They'll just cross whenever and wherever they like.

And then there's the concern about gangs stopping Waymos to rob the passengers, and the Waymos won't take evasive maneuvers that could harm any of the gang members.

The only real answer to this is stepped up enforcement of jaywalking laws, to keep traffic flowing. More police, more tickets, more arrests. It will descend into hysteria about over-policing and racism and suppressing protests, like everything else.; 6/30/25, 11:22 AM
Kai Akker said...: The flash of a secret message is only .... well, whatever it is. Darn. But thanks, Ficta and AA, for the help.; 6/30/25, 11:28 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Remember that 1970s book "Subliminal Seduction." I read that book and got caught up in the craze for looking for the word "SEX" written on the ice cubes in a whisky ad and so forth.; 6/30/25, 11:32 AM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/30/25, 11:33 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: All cars should be driverless and run by a central computer. Traffic flow could be perfectly coordinated and seamless; it could go much faster and never have to stop, unless unruly pedestrians or asshole protesters got in the way. In that case the computer would immediately dispatch robocops to deal with them.; 6/30/25, 11:36 AM
rehajm said...: Hungry? Eat popcorn…; 6/30/25, 11:38 AM
rhhardin said...: I'm having trouble with automatic traffic lights. To turn right off the highway exit, you have to run over the turn-left sensor because the turn-right sensor doesn't work. That will give you a green and you can proceed. Too expensive to fix.

Ohio passed a law a few years ago that after waiting long enough to discover that a light is not working, you can run the red.; 6/30/25, 11:44 AM
Mason G said...: "The kids born in January vs the kids born in Dec are a year bigger and faster and at 5 that's a big difference."

It is a big difference. I played in Little League as a kid. My birthday is the day before the cutoff, so I was always playing against kids that were nearly a year older than me but playing as the same age. It does matter, at least for a few years.

Where this argument goes off the rails is that people don't continue to grow forever. Those competing in professional sports are typically not growing children. Eventually, the older kids' growth ends and the younger ones catch up.; 6/30/25, 11:50 AM
Temujin said...: No one expects the unintended consequences. Then they happen and everyone forgets what the experts told you and pretends they all saw it coming.; 6/30/25, 11:52 AM
Keith said...: Mason G said...

"The kids born in January vs the kids born in Dec are a year bigger and faster and at 5 that's a big difference."

It is a big difference. I played in Little League as a kid. My birthday is the day before the cutoff, so I was always playing against kids that were nearly a year older than me but playing as the same age. It does matter, at least for a few years.

Where this argument goes off the rails is that people don't continue to grow forever. Those competing in professional sports are typically not growing children. Eventually, the older kids' growth ends and the younger ones catch up.
6/30/25, 11:50 AM

...

I get what you're saying. His point though was that the oldest kids are selected at young ages. By the time everyone catches up - let's say at 15 or 16 or 18 - that selection process has been going on for over a decade and so the result of this small apparently inconsequential rule is that the high level athletes have been selected out and are born in the beginning of the year.

It's a great theory. Like standing six feet away to prevent covid.

The problem is that it's not true. If you look at the NHL rosters they list month/year birthdays. And it's just not true.

So if the one and only part of his book that can be verified independently is not true, it would be reasonable to conclude that nothing else about his book his true. As he never addressed this publicly to my mind, it means you really can't trust anything he claims.; 6/30/25, 12:08 PM
Jupiter said...: This moron has a podcast?; 6/30/25, 12:08 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: “I'm having trouble with automatic traffic lights. To turn right off the highway exit, you have to run over the turn-left sensor because the turn-right sensor doesn't work. That will give you a green and you can proceed. Too expensive to fix.”

When I lived in Madison years ago I rode a motorcycle, and often had to cross University at Charter St late at night. The light there did not sense motorcycles, and would not flip green until a car wanted to cross. So, making sure the coast was clear ( this was usually after midnight), I would just run the light. Yeah, I was a wild one.; 6/30/25, 12:22 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: “The problem is that it's not true. If you look at the NHL rosters they list month/year birthdays. And it's just not true.”

You can explain that too. The five-year-olds will include some especially gifted ones who can compete with the six-year-olds. These prodigies will be noticed and especially encouraged to continue to play, so the best of them are more likely to go on to the pros. The two effects cancel, so birthdays in the NHL will be evenly distributed.

A good theorist can explain anything.; 6/30/25, 12:35 PM
Jamie said...: No one expects the unintended consequences.

It's kind of the point of the phrase, right?

I wanted to say the same thing: we are typically very bad at predicting how new tech will develop and how we will use it. This is why I'm less panicked about AI than my kids (who range from about to enter the workforce to about five years in) tell me I should be. I'm worried, but not panicked. "Futurists" - it seems to me we lost a pretty good one when Michael Crichton died so young (and maybe I ought to be more panicked, as his day-after-tomorrow tech always ended up being best exploited by the villain of the piece), but most of them just don't actually do their job very well.; 6/30/25, 1:17 PM
Original Mike said...: "A good theorist can explain anything."

Thus, demonstrating the limitations of theory.; 6/30/25, 1:24 PM
gilbar said...: Original Mike said...
"A good theorist can explain anything."
Thus, demonstrating the limitations of theory.

in Theory, theory and practice are the Same..
but in Practice, they're NOT; 6/30/25, 1:25 PM
gilbar said...: "less panicked about AI than my kids (who range from about to enter the workforce to about five years in) tell me I should be."

just LOOK!
look at the horseshoeing industry.. ruined!
look at the street cleaning industry.. ruined!
look at the flint napping industry.. ruined!
look at the atlatl making industry.. RUINED!

ALL "progress" has EVER Done, is Ruin Industries!
So MANY Jobs.. GONE FOR EVER!!!
Now, NO ONE has a job!!

Of course, the Good News IS:
no one (not many at least) are having children, so it's All academic; 6/30/25, 1:30 PM
Mark said...: Will be nice for bicycling. All you need to do is cut out into traffic and pretend to be Moses as the sea of traffic parts for you.; 6/30/25, 1:35 PM
Kirk Parker said...: In fairness to Gladwell (I can't believe I'm saying this, his sort of silly catastrophizing is hardly fair to others), he *does* say fairly early on "...If every car on the road were driverless..."

That doesn't prove anything about his point, of course, but I think it should put to rest any thought that saying "But we already have a small percentage of our local traffic as Waymo vehicles" is any kind of refutation of what he is saying.; 6/30/25, 1:38 PM
gilbar said...: Smilin' Jack said...
"All cars should be driverless and run by a central computer."

i've been saying for a Long Time now,
that we don't need smart cars; we need smart highways

10 thousand computer cars are going to run into each other
(at least get in each other's way)
1 smart road could put the cars in their place, and keep them there.
think about the next time you're merging on a hiway or making a left hand turn.

If the road was in charge, it'd speed up one car (a bit) and slow the other one down (a bit) and it'd all be smooth.

Scheduling!; 6/30/25, 1:38 PM
Jay Vogt said...: Well, he's kinda right and kinda wrong. They will make mistakes - just usually overly cautious mistakes (those happen).

That said, he's right that driverless cars are a mind-bendingly dumb idea.; 6/30/25, 1:48 PM
Kirk Parker said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/30/25, 2:16 PM
Kirk Parker said...: rhhardin @ 11:44 AM,

No free right turn on red where you live? Why not move to a civilized state?; 6/30/25, 2:17 PM
Eva Marie said...: “That said, he's right that driverless cars are a mind-bendingly dumb idea.”
It’s a dumb idea if they’re made mandatory. Then just no. But as someone who prefers car trips to plane trips, I would love to have a driverless car take me on long trips - and even short trips when the day comes and for age reasons I can’t drive myself.; 6/30/25, 2:18 PM
dbp said...: Gladwell has a point, but his hypothetical problem will only happen once every car is driverless and that might be never.; 6/30/25, 2:48 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Basically he's saying the cars arent sensitive enough and cant discern someone playing around with them and someone just jaywalking. They rigidly have to obey two commandments - thou shalt not break the traffic laws and thou shalt not run over a person or hit another car.

I think the real problem will happen when car is faced with a hobson's choice. Do I run or person, or take a chance of hitting another car? Or do I violate the traffic laws to minimize damage or avoid damage?

We've all had to do crazy manuevers to avoid accidents or avoid worse ones. I once had to deliberately ram my car into telephone pole to avoid hitting a jay walking pedestrian.; 6/30/25, 4:40 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: What is the Driverless' cars answer to the trolley problem?; 6/30/25, 4:41 PM
bagoh20 said...: Personally, I have no desire to do any job that a machine can do better, except one.; 6/30/25, 4:43 PM
rehajm said...: …spend some tome imagining real scenarios. Get creative. I’ll start with some low hanging fruit- does your autononaut operate in the rain? Snow? Thunderstorm? Fog? What if it isn’t doing those things where you’re picked up but it is halfway to your destination? What’s the car do? Save itself? ‘Abundance of caution’? Is that a reliable mode of treasportation? What if you got drunk at the bar expecting it to take you home? What if it was someone you’ll be on the road with later did? Sure, all just a software update away I’m sure so what about the inevitable fatality- and there are still going to be inevitable fatalities….the engineers made choices who the car avoids and who it collides with in certain scenarios- happy with their choices? Your attorney won’t be…; 6/30/25, 4:54 PM

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