beat
Joined 13 years ago
Joined 13 years ago
Computer vision could be making those go-stop decisions for you, much more effectively than human drivers.
Heck, imagine a "smart" parking lot that tracks its available spaces and communicates with your car. You enter the parking lot and hand over control, and the car and lot work together to park you safely in the best available space.
The danger with an autonomous vehicle is it not seeing you. The danger with a driver is not noticing you.
In the past couple of weeks, I've narrowly avoided hitting pedestrians three different times. Each time, the pedestrian was somewhere other than a valid crosswalk (once was on a highway exit). In each case, I think an autonomous vehicle could have handled it better than me.
I read a statistic long ago - don't know how true it is, but it feels truthy - that half of all traffic fatalities happen between 9pm and 3am on friday and saturday nights. The fact that autonomous systems will never be intoxicated, distracted, or emotional makes me feel much safer.
In the case of Minneapolis, the city committed to a plan (Minneapolis2040) to increase housing density. And a lot of that new apartment/condo construction (mostly on unused or old industrial land) is necessarily out of financial reach for average residents. But the increased supply helps protect the prices for the existing houses and older apartments, whether privately owned or rentals.
It's not perfect, it's arguably not even good, but it's a tradeoff most Minneapolis residents can live with.
Also, it's a lot easier for me to finish what I'm doing before answering a chat than it is to finish what I'm doing and answer someone standing next to me. Although I'm known for putting a finger up in the air at them and making them wait.
Something that happened here, as the protests kicked up, was organized robbery under the guise of looting. We'd see a van pull up to a boutique clothing/electronics store, and a group would pour out... a mix of "looters", lookouts, and security. They'd smash the store, grab the best stuff, toss it into the van, and roll away in minutes. That's not "looting". That's organized crime. And, because Minneapolis police were too busy tear-gassing peaceful protesters to bother protecting residents or property, it was easy.
So Chicago... after a police shooting, someone immediately goes online and calls for looting downtown, where all the nice boutiques are. Which, of course, creates plenty of cover for these organized teams to clean out stores. In other words, there's a fundamental difference between an organized crew robbing a boutique clothing store, and a poor mother walking out of a "looted" Target with a grocery cart full of diapers and food.
The public conversation, of course, lacks such distinctions.
http://congruence.io