There's something about driving that turns ordinary people into assholes. I've observed it in myself. Bus passengers are much more considerate, and I think that passengers in self-driving vehicles will behave like passengers, not like drivers. So if a pedestrian cuts them off they'll just shrug and keep playing their game or whatever they're doing.
My theory is that people act like jerks behind the wheel, and come across as jerks even when they're not, because drivers have no way to apologize or ask please or do any other polite thing. All they can do is honk the horn, which is like yelling "HEY!!" If there were a communication mechanism for "excuse me, the light is green now" and "oops, so sorry, didn't see you there" driving would be easier and more pleasant.
I feel like in large cities the majority of drivers actually practice "mean" driving techniques - tailgating, lane protection (preventing people from merging-in when they have to), zoom-ups near contest areas, loud-music in communities, lane weaving.. I've left the bay area a long time ago now, but it's amazing when you live outside of that a couple years how awful people are behind the wheel. I would call it passive-aggressive behavior and it is really really bad to ones mental health. Bay area, Denver, Portland, Seattle there's a few others out west here - but make no mistake, the actions people take while driving is 100% actual jerk, not mistaken jerk.
In Poland there's an unwritten custom of saying thanks by flashing emergency stop lights for two ticks. The most common use case is when someone lets you through when they don't have to.
On freeways the same is used by cars coming from the opposite direction if there's a radar ahead.
Still, in peak hours pretty much everyone is a dick, even usually chill Uber drivers.
Edit: it's also used as a "sorry" signal too.
Also, this is not local. I've seen it used all around the country.
Definitely not local. Pretty much a given in Lithuania too. If someone lets you in etc, it's just rude to not flash emergency lights. Even if somebody squeezed in like total dickhead during a rush hour
We use headlights to warn of friends waiting on the other side of the bush though.
Exactly! Every communication you try to make in a car can be interpreted as aggressiveness, which escalates anger on both sides. You need a way to de-escalate.
Yes, in Japan there is a custom of briefly tooting the horn to say thank you (for example when someone lets you in in front of them) and they still have problems when people have different ideas of what constitutes "too long".
Hah! I come from Ireland where the custom is also a brief flash of the emergency indicators to say "thanks". I then moved to New Zealand where they toot the horn to say thanks. I was most confused when I got tooted (rude in Ireland) for letting someone pass easily. I was like * buddy ;) then I realized what was going on, well, eventually anyway :)
Ha. In Boston I used to get frustrated at oncoming drivers flashing their lights at me. What was I doing wrong? Are my headlights misaligned? Is something falling off? Do I know you?
Eventually I worked it out: they were warning me of a police cruiser ahead.
In a state known for Massholes it’s surprisingly unjerkish.
Dangerous driving can result in damage, injury, or death. That is why people are so volatile behind the wheel. I don’t think there is any system of communication that can prevent or stop road rage. Dampen, maybe, but that’s about it.
If the internet has taught us anything, it's that anything that facilitates conversation facilitates all types and styles of conversation. I'd posit that a more sophisticated inter-car communication system would add at least one new road rage incident for every one it prevents.
Paradoxically, in some places horns are used much more liberally and if you spend much time there that's the feeling you start getting from a honk. Like a "hey just wanted to let you know I'm behind you".
When I travelled from India to Nepal I noticed that both places had liberal horn usage, but in Nepal almost all of the horns were musical. They felt much more pleasant than the same custom in New Delhi.
They often find other ways to express their jerkiness, like stepping on the gas, swerving around you and cutting you off, or aggressively tailgating, or you know... hand gestures.
> There's something about driving that turns ordinary people into assholes.
Game theory with no further interaction so no consequence to defecting other than the immediate.
The problem is that there is always somebody willing to be a jerk to save 2 minutes since nobody wanted to be stuck in traffic. The only defense against that is "Do unto before done unto" and that turns everybody into jerks.
The world is already overly car-centered. If cars can't see and stop for people, then they've become an expansion of that problem. I live in a place where, once you're off the curb on corners where there's no light, cars are required to slow/stop for you. Many people will voluntarily do that even if you're NOT off the curb yet. It feels like a courtesy.
The scenario you're describing, OTOH, feels even more alienating than what we're already suffering. What in the hell gives you, sitting on a seat in a car, more right to travel through a space than a walking human being?
Many people will voluntarily do that even if you're NOT off the curb yet. It feels like a courtesy.
Eh, as a pedestrian, I hate that. I have to conscientiously turn my back to avoid impeding the traffic when I don't want to pass!
Still, I agree with you; self-driving cars that can't be trusted to slow down and stop for pedestrians should not pass the licensing requirements. And not just for humans, either; we're not going to teach other animals to follow traffic laws any time soon. I've already seen too many cats killed by assholes speeding over the limit on residential streets.
If stricter enforcement of jaywalking laws is required for self-driving cars to work, you can already forget about those cars in almost all other countries where jaywalking laws don't even exist and certainly won't be accepted in the future.
Don't protest self-driving cars, protest the laws you feel shouldn't apply to you. After all, there are plenty of other reasons jaywalking laws might become more strictly enforced.
The term "jaywalking" was a slur invented by car companies to steal rights from pedestrians. If cars can't avoid people, the cars need to be separated by physical barriers or removed.
If I'm not mistaken, car makers first lobbied to outlaw jaywalking. So if it's anything like the past, protesting self-driving cars and protesting the laws will amount to the same thing.
It depends on the city. My nearest metro does enforce them... at locations for which a particularly large number of people are wont to illegally cross, such as around the University.
Otherwise, enforcement is spotty at best, because the police have better things to do, such as ticket parked cars with expired tabs or meters.
If there were a sudden uptick in pedestrian-car collisions, you can bet they'll crack down.
None of the above addresses whether the law SHOULD be on the books, which is what people should put their efforts towards changing, if they feel is unjust. Protesting car companies that make self driving cars because they don't like an already existing set of laws is just misguided at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.
They already aren't built for pedestrians in most of the world. I'd be happy just removing the chance that I get killed by a car because the driver wasn't feeling good that day.
That said... I think passengers in self-driving cars will learn to be more patient and we can allow self-driving cars to yield to pedestrians more often.
There's something really repulsive about this solution that I can't really eloquently articulate. Every advance in technology seems to further restrict and control people.
True, but much of the political importance of oil has to do with the threat of a sudden oil shortage. The first defense (for the US) is to create massive reserve tanks, the second is to befriend oil producing regimes, the third is to invest trillions propping up those regimes.
The majority of countries are already enacting laws/frameworks/technology that would help eventually outlaw this sort of behaviour, perhaps not explicitly, but many times implicitly. For example in Australia the govt is looking to push facial recognition cameras into public places and "only use them for serious crimes where the sentence is 3 years or more". What they fail to tell you is that in Aus, public disturbance carries something like 5 years, so now there's the very legitimate worry that facial recognition could be used on people fighting for their rights and showing support. Used the Aus example because the two countries are fairly similar law wise, and with their surveillance stances.
Does anyone with some technical knowledge of batteries and solar panels know whether it would be possible to put solar panels on top of the trailer and charge the battery that way?
If our company had to delete all customer data for a particular customer, then I would need to:
restore 6 months of database backups individually, remove the data, then run then take and store each backup again.
have 3 years worth of tape backups shipped back to us from our data protection company. Restore the databases off of them, delete the data, store them back on tape, and have them shipped back to the long term storage facility.
It is not just the deletion when closing your account. It is the keeping track of all the copies that have to be made during regular operation (including packets in temporary buffers, periodic backups, cached version, redundant copies to hedge against data loss) just incase one day the user decides to delete.
