# Uber’s use of fewer safety sensors prompts questions after Arizona crash



## Jo3030 (Jan 2, 2016)

*Uber's use of fewer safety sensors prompts questions after Arizona crash*

*https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...93f5&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter*

TEMPE, Ariz./PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - When Uber decided in 2016 to retire its fleet of self-driving Ford Fusion cars in favor of Volvo sport utility vehicles, it also chose to scale back on one notable piece of technology: the safety sensors used to detect objects in the road.

That decision resulted in a self-driving vehicle with more blind spots than its own earlier generation of autonomous cars, as well as those of its rivals, according to interviews with five former employees and four industry experts who spoke for the first time about Uber's technology switch.

Driverless cars are supposed to avoid accidents with lidar - which uses laser light pulses to detect hazards on the road - and other sensors such as radar and cameras. The new Uber driverless vehicle is armed with only one roof-mounted lidar sensor compared with seven lidar units on the older Ford Fusion models Uber employed, according to diagrams prepared by Uber.

In scaling back to a single lidar on the Volvo, Uber introduced a blind zone around the perimeter of the SUV that cannot fully detect pedestrians, according to interviews with former employees and Raj Rajkumar, the head of Carnegie Mellon University's transportation center who has been working on self-driving technology for over a decade.

The lidar system made by Velodyne - one of the top suppliers of sensors for self-driving vehicles - sees objects in a 360-degree circle around the car, but has a narrow vertical range that prevents it from detecting obstacles low to the ground, according to information on Velodyne's website as well as former employees who operated the Uber SUVs.

Autonomous vehicles operated by rivals Waymo, Alphabet Inc's self-driving vehicle unit, have six lidar sensors, while General Motors Co's vehicle contains five, according to information from the companies.

Uber declined to comment on its decision to reduce its lidar count. In a statement late Tuesday, an Uber spokeswoman said, "We believe that technology has the power to make transportation safer than ever before and recognize our responsibility to contribute to safety in our communities. As we develop self-driving technology, safety is our primary concern every step of the way."

Uber referred questions on the blind spot to Velodyne. Velodyne acknowledged that with the rooftop lidar there is a roughly three meter blind spot around a vehicle, saying that more sensors are necessary.

"If you're going to avoid pedestrians, you're going to need to have a side lidar to see those pedestrians and avoid them, especially at night," Marta Hall, president and chief business development officer at Velodyne, told Reuters.

The safety of Uber's self-driving car program is under intense scrutiny since Elaine Herzberg, 49, was killed last week after an Uber Volvo XC90 SUV operating in autonomous mode struck and killed her while she was jaywalking with her bicycle in Tempe, Arizona.

The precise causes of the Arizona accident are not yet known, and it is unclear how the vehicle's sensors functioned that night or whether the lidar's blind spot played a role. The incident is under investigation by local police and federal safety officials who have offered few details, including whether Uber's decision to scale back its sensors is under review.

Uber has said it is cooperating in the investigation and has pulled all of its autonomous cars off the road, but has provided no further details about the crash.

Like the older Fusion model, Uber's top competitors place multiple, smaller lidar units around the car to augment the central rooftop lidar, a practice experts in the field say provides more complete coverage of the road.

The earlier Fusion test cars used seven lidars, seven radars and 20 cameras. The newer Volvo test vehicles use a single lidar, 10 radars and seven cameras, Uber said.


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## Bubsie (Oct 19, 2017)

With a 3 meter blind spot with its sole lidar the pedestrian should still have been seen. Sounds like the additional lidar units are used to fill in the coverage gap inside the 3 meter blindspot, in the front, to the sides and behind the vehicle. So for heavy pedestrian conditions you would want the additional lidars. But for highway travel like where the crash occured a single unit should be able to detect in 360 degrees, outside the 3 meter blindspot.


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

W


Jo3030 said:


> *Uber's use of fewer safety sensors prompts questions after Arizona crash*
> 
> *https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...93f5&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter*
> 
> ...


Well
Putting it 2 Feet higher up on an S.U.V. didnt improve its chances now did it.

So they cut SAFETY to 1/6 of previous levels , then altered the telemetry !
Smoooooth.

Yes we feel monitoring pedestrians on the ground is best achieved from the ROOF !

" LOWER RATES MEAN LESS LIDAR "!


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## Fuzzyelvis (Dec 7, 2014)

tohunt4me said:


> W
> 
> Well
> Putting it 2 Feet higher up on an S.U.V. didnt improve its chances now did it.
> ...


It's the same principle as paying drivers less: save money and we don't care if the quality goes down.


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

But it makes a great " stormscope" for monitoring weather conditions . . .

( "Flying Cars")


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## Wonkytonk (Jan 28, 2018)

Jo3030 said:


> In scaling back to a single lidar on the Volvo, Uber introduced a blind zone around the perimeter of the SUV that cannot fully detect pedestrians, according to interviews with former employees and Raj Rajkumar, the head of Carnegie Mellon University's transportation center who has been working on self-driving technology for over a decade.


I don't know, is it me, or does it seem like in the background some monetary decisions were made to cut cost here?

The optics of this thing are absolutely horrible for Uber at this point. It's coming off as though they tried to save money, over safety, and as could very well be determined down the road a proximate result of that was a pedestrian losing her life.

Also what was the car programmed to do in this circumstance, failing any input suggesting a pedestrian was approaching it doesn't seem to have taken any action to mitigate a collision which doesn't seem unreasonable until you consider it should have had that input.

Was the death of that pedestrian because the pedestrian could not have been seen, or because it could not have been seen by that autonomous vehicle due to the lack of sensors on board? If that autonomous vehicle had had the same number of sensors as the previous set of vehicles could that death of a pedestrian have been avoided? And if the answer to that question is yes to what level is Uber culpable?

I would say greatly.

Uber's autonomous vehicles need to be permanently grounded until they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they don't pose a threat to pedestrians in the states in which they're being utilized.


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

Everything in that article suggests it had no business not seeing the pedestrian, even with the technology it has now. The pedestrian wasn't on the side, it was in front of it, and it wasn't 3 feet away, it was more than 300 feet in front. Lidar is supposed to be like radar, and should be just like a bat, it should be able to see in the dark.

Sounds like the type of spin we see from Bart Mccoy.


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

Wonkytonk said:


> I don't know, is it me, or does it seem like in the background some monetary decisions were made to cut cost here?
> 
> The optics of this thing are absolutely horrible for Uber at this point. It's coming off as though they tried to save money, over safety, and as could very well be determined down the road a proximate result of that was a pedestrian losing her life.
> 
> ...


Save money by buying EXPENSIVE VOLVOS. 24,000.
Lets cut back on safety !

How about you buy Hyndai S.U.V. for 1/3 the price and ADD 4 LIDAR SENSOERS TO THE 6 YOU HAD !

And get 100,000 mile warranty !

Then you could hire a REAL SAFETY TECHNICIAN .

INSTEAD OF LAWYERS !

And Pay the Drivers !
Who got You this far !



uberdriverfornow said:


> Everything in that article suggests it had no business not seeing the pedestrian, even with the technology it has now. The pedestrian wasn't on the side, it was in front of it, and it wasn't 3 feet away, it was more than 300 feet in front. Lidar is supposed to be like radar, and should be just like a bat, it should be able to see in the dark.
> 
> Sounds like the type of spin we see from Bart Mccoy.


They havent reorganized from the " "pedestrian stepped off sidewalk out of bush" story yet !


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## Jesusdrivesuber (Jan 5, 2017)

The victim's family should walk away with no less than 50-100 million, sue uber directly for a myriad of violations, let them get the idea of how much their testing is going to cost.


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## heynow321 (Sep 3, 2015)

Jesusdrivesuber said:


> The victim's family should walk away with no less than 50-100 million, sue uber directly for a myriad of violations, let them get the idea of how much their testing is going to cost.


It will be interesting to watch the court case. My guess is boober settles outside of court as they don't want any kind of precedent set


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## ntcindetroit (Mar 23, 2017)

It's all the fault that they were pressured to remove VP of Engineering that should have a better judgement than the rest of the ex's that board of directors trust.


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## Bart McCoy (Nov 4, 2014)

Jesusdrivesuber said:


> The victim's family should walk away with no less than 50-100 million, sue uber directly for a myriad of violations, let them get the idea of how much their testing is going to cost.


$100 million was crossing illegally, and not looking before you cross. That's what you want to see? That means I can walk out into a highway right now, and sue anybody that hits me for $50mil. Great logic there.

On top of that, the person was homeless. But yeah, his family would come out the woodworks to get that money, I'm sure...



heynow321 said:


> It will be interesting to watch the court case. My guess is boober settles outside of court as they don't want any kind of precedent set


Uber could win if they fight it, because clearly there was contributory negligence on the pedestrian. The pedestrian was all in the wrong, no where in the right. It has to be proved that a driver could have avoided the accident. Most humans aren't superheros, nor are computers. You can't avoid anything thrown at you with little time to react. It's really only a guess that the accident could have been avoided.

Of course, if Uber just wants this all to go away, they will settle. I sure wouldn't.


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## heynow321 (Sep 3, 2015)

Bart McCoy said:


> .
> ...
> 
> It's really only a guess that the accident could have been avoided.
> .


 It easily could have been avoided had boobers employee been paying attention. You understand you have completely destroyed your credibility around here and have now been placed in the same category as greg and ramz right?


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## ntcindetroit (Mar 23, 2017)

Same Car, Same road, same traffic sign, Not same Elaine. Snapshot shows that car can slowdown, stopped in front of the big traffic sign that says [YIELD TO BIKES]

No shadow, no doubt because it was operated by the Fed, not the Uber.


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## Jesusdrivesuber (Jan 5, 2017)

Bart McCoy said:


> $100 million was crossing illegally, and not looking before you cross. That's what you want to see? That means I can walk out into a highway right now, and sue anybody that hits me for $50mil. Great logic there.


If you happen to be a multi billion dollar company, yes, pay me the **** up, you come off as defending this kind of shit? their SYSTEM ****ed up and they hired a felon as safety? LOL.

Otherwise you can rot in jail for a few decades for all I care but you can't jail Uber (company) or the person responsible due the fact, their system just like their app and practices is notoriously known to be - yes you guessed it - shit.



Bart McCoy said:


> On top of that, the person was homeless. But yeah, his family would come out the woodworks to get that money, I'm sure...


Even if they were to drain the hell out of Uber's bank, is still a good thing.


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## Bart McCoy (Nov 4, 2014)

heynow321 said:


> It easily could have been avoided had boobers employee been paying attention. You understand you have completely destroyed your credibility around here and have now been placed in the same category as greg and ramz right?


Don't care what people on the internet think. All I care if what I think of people who refused to accept the crashed was caused by an illegal and negligent pedestrian!!



Jesusdrivesuber said:


> If you happen to be a multi billion dollar company, yes, pay me the &%[email protected]!* up, you come off as defending this kind of shit? their SYSTEM &%[email protected]!*ed up and they hired a felon as safety? LOL.
> 
> Otherwise you can rot in jail for a few decades for all I care but you can't jail Uber (company) or the person responsible due the fact, their system just like their app and practices is notoriously known to be - yes you guessed it - shit.


so you support running into streets negligently to get a paycheck (if you survive). Good to know


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## Jesusdrivesuber (Jan 5, 2017)

Bart McCoy said:


> so you support running into streets negligently to get a paycheck (if you survive). Good to know


Jaywalking or not you commit vehicular manslaughter, guess you will have to be more careful after your sentence/lawsuit or you know:

Hire a non felon/professional.
Use enough Lidars.
Use "working" Lidars.
Make sure you test away from people.

Just to give you a few of the myriad of reasons why Uber deserves to get ****ed and HARD for this.


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## Bubsie (Oct 19, 2017)

Bart McCoy said:


> $100 million was crossing illegally, and not looking before you cross. That's what you want to see? That means I can walk out into a highway right now, and sue anybody that hits me for $50mil. Great logic there.
> 
> On top of that, the person was homeless. But yeah, his family would come out the woodworks to get that money, I'm sure...
> 
> ...


The "safety driver" was looking down and away from the road ****ing around with her phone for over 5 seconds prior to hitting the pedestrian. A trained chimp could prob have done better.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

Jo3030 said:


> *Uber's use of fewer safety sensors prompts questions after Arizona crash*
> 
> *https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...93f5&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter*
> 
> ...


Their sdc program is toast.


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## JimKE (Oct 28, 2016)

We need to keep in mind that there are really two different justice systems involved here, and they are very different.

At the conclusion of the police/NTSB investigation, the *criminal case* will go to the prosecutors for a prosecution decision. IF they decide to charge either Uber or the Uber driver, they will have to prove their case *"beyond a reasonable doubt,"* and it is that very high threshold that they will consider in their decision. If they don't think they can convince a jury to convict "beyond a reasonable doubt," they will not charge anyone.

The other venue, however, is the civil justice system. A *civil lawsuit* could be filed against Uber, and the burden of proof in a civil case is *"preponderance of the evidence." *If a jury felt Uber was negligent, or their employee was negligent, and that negligence contributed to the victim's injury/death, they could find for the plaintiffs and award a cash judgement.

In civil cases, responsibility is also often _apportioned_ to the various parties according to how much the jury felt that party contributed to the loss. So for example, a jury could say that Uber's SDC failure was 25% responsible, the victim jaywalking was 50% responsible, and the Uber employee's obvious negligence was 25% responsible. They would then evaluate the loss and assign 50% of that loss to Uber. _(I just picked numbers out of a hat to give an example -- I have no idea how a jury would evaluate evidence none of us have seen.) _


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## Bart McCoy (Nov 4, 2014)

JimKE said:


> The other venue, however, is the civil justice system. A *civil lawsuit* could be filed against Uber, and the burden of proof in a civil case is *"preponderance of the evidence." *If a jury felt Uber was negligent, or their employee was negligent, and that negligence contributed to the victim's injury/death, they could find for the plaintiffs and award a cash judgement.


Here's the thing though, in most of those civil cases, the plaintiff is innocent, and committed no crime. However, in this case, you write all that about Uber being negligent, but you're saying the pedestrians negligence doesn't play a role at all?????? or do you hate uber as well and claim there was no negligence on the pedestrian's part? So why talk about negligence, without including the major negligence of crossing the street wtihout looking? Uber had the right of way.

Why would pedestrian's negligence, which 100% contributed to his death be discarded, and only put the alledged negligence of Uber on trial? please help me to understand that


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

And we all know that pedestrian didn't just teleport to the spot just before the car got there, she walked slowly from the median to that spot.


Bart McCoy said:


> Here's the thing though, in most of those civil cases, the plaintiff is innocent, and committed no crime. However, in this case, you write all that about Uber being negligent, but you're saying the pedestrians negligence doesn't play a role at all?????? or do you hate uber as well and claim there was no negligence on the pedestrian's part? So why talk about negligence, without including the major negligence of crossing the street wtihout looking? Uber had the right of way.
> 
> Why would pedestrian's negligence, which 100% contributed to his death be discarded, and only put the alledged negligence of Uber on trial? please help me to understand that


It's likely going to be around 50/50. Uber isn't going to be 100% at fault.


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## JimKE (Oct 28, 2016)

Bart McCoy said:


> Here's the thing though, in most of those civil cases, the plaintiff is innocent, and committed no crime.


If you go back and read my post, you will see that I was talking about two completely different justice systems. In civil cases, terms like guilty, innocent, and crime are irrelevant. The civil system does not deal with issues of guilt or innocence.

I thought I made that clear, but apparently not.


> However, in this case, you write all that about Uber being negligent, but you're saying the pedestrians negligence doesn't play a role at all?????? or do you hate uber as well and claim there was no negligence on the pedestrian's part?


No offense, but that is a total falsehood, and you know it is.

In my example, I used a 50% negligence figure for the useless, homeless, jaywalking scofflaw.

You're just making stuff up, and anybody who reads your post and looks at mine is laughing at you right now.


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## Bubsie (Oct 19, 2017)

Bart McCoy said:


> Here's the thing though, in most of those civil cases, the plaintiff is innocent, and committed no crime. However, in this case, you write all that about Uber being negligent, but you're saying the pedestrians negligence doesn't play a role at all?????? or do you hate uber as well and claim there was no negligence on the pedestrian's part? So why talk about negligence, without including the major negligence of crossing the street wtihout looking? Uber had the right of way.
> 
> Why would pedestrian's negligence, which 100% contributed to his death be discarded, and only put the alledged negligence of Uber on trial? please help me to understand that


Did you even read his post to the end? In his hypothetical, he assigns 50% blame to pedestrian, 25% to Uber and 25% to the "safety driver".



JimKE said:


> In civil cases, responsibility is also often _apportioned_ to the various parties according to how much the jury felt that party contributed to the loss. So for example, a jury could say that Uber's SDC failure was 25% responsible, the victim jaywalking was 50% responsible, and the Uber employee's obvious negligence was 25% responsible. They would then evaluate the loss and assign 50% of that loss to Uber. _(I just picked numbers out of a hat to give an example -- I have no idea how a jury would evaluate evidence none of us have seen.)_


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## Bubsie (Oct 19, 2017)

Comments from Velodyne, the manufacturer of the lidar unit:

"LiDAR, an acronym for light, detection and ranging, is a technology that shoots out pulsed laser beams to create 3D "point cloud" images of a vehicle's surroundings hundreds of feet away. It sees people, objects, animals, trees and other vehicles in daylight or at night that cameras or human eyes might not detect. Similarly, Uber's vehicles also use radar to detect hard objects, like Herzberg's bicycle, at longer distances, as well as multiple cameras.

"Our LiDAR is capable of clearly imaging Elaine and her bicycle in this situation. However, our LiDAR doesn't make the decision to put on the brakes or get out of her way," said Hall, who is the wife of David Hall, Velodyne's CEO, founder and inventor of its spinning, multi-laser beam LiDAR units. "We don't know what sensors were on the Uber car that evening, if they were working, or how they were being used.""

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...riving-ubers-failure-to-avoid-pedestrian/amp/


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## tohunt4me (Nov 23, 2015)

Wonkytonk said:


> I don't know, is it me, or does it seem like in the background some monetary decisions were made to cut cost here?
> 
> The optics of this thing are absolutely horrible for Uber at this point. It's coming off as though they tried to save money, over safety, and as could very well be determined down the road a proximate result of that was a pedestrian losing her life.
> 
> ...


It seems that Uber has a Habit of making Repeated Stupid Decisions.


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## ntcindetroit (Mar 23, 2017)

tohunt4me said:


> It seems that Uber has a Habit of making Repeated Stupid Decisions.


We don't think it was stupid or not. It clearly is one way to cut down cost by bean counters that was/were tasked to develop a SDC Uber machine. for the wishful IPO.


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## Immoralized (Nov 7, 2017)

I don't know about any of the american cities. In Australia though people crossing the road all the time and doubly so at night when they are "drunk". Could not care any less if they were to be "hit" or not. They just want to get to the other side of that road and just step out.

I could not hit the brakes when I see that happening or just continue on with the speed I'm going at maintain course and go right on ahead  It what uber self driving car just did was pick the second option because it couldn't see and if it could see didn't care. On the other hand I actually do care if I hit someone even been "right" I still wouldn't put a death sentence on anyone if I can stop safely.

2 million Uber drivers on the road doing billions of trips each year collectively and very little incidents of any one of those drivers running over people  The question is put forward. Are self driving cars really safer or just marketing hype and BS?

You can't stop someone drinking and driving, driving without a license, driving under the influence of drugs or even a driver committing road rage yet. Have the technology to do so but at this stage i'm going to say humans are still safer drivers then machines under legal circumstances where the driver is driving like they are supposed to be driving.


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## STMNine (May 11, 2015)

Bubsie said:


> The "safety driver" was looking down and away from the road &%[email protected]!*ing around with her phone for over 5 seconds prior to hitting the pedestrian. A trained chimp could prob have done better.


C'mon, it's so obvious judging by her demeanor! Just like with us, Uber probably doesn't pay her enough to give a damn.


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## UberLaLa (Sep 6, 2015)

There is a simple explanation to Uber's thinking on this. 

They realize there is no way to own and maintain a fleet of SDCs as cheaply as having human drivers use their own cars.

Uber is intentionally sabotaging the SDC industry.


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## Pedro Paramo66 (Jan 17, 2018)

Bubsie said:


> With a 3 meter blind spot with its sole lidar the pedestrian should still have been seen. Sounds like the additional lidar units are used to fill in the coverage gap inside the 3 meter blindspot, in the front, to the sides and behind the vehicle. So for heavy pedestrian conditions you would want the additional lidars. But for highway travel like where the crash occured a single unit should be able to detect in 360 degrees, outside the 3 meter blindspot.


All this articles regarding this Travis scam are misinforming people because they never mention that uber self driving car is the last thing Uber is interested on, the main asset Travis has is the bunch of stupid creepy losers brainwashed willing to drive for charity and donations, Uber don't have to worry about, clean up, insurance, maintenance, repairs, parking, gas......... Uber know they have the stupid drivers willing to do that for charity and donations or less
Self driving car is a hoax Uber invented to threat the drivers: "you better keep driving for such ridiculous cheap fares because I'm about to replace you" and the stupid drivers believe so
I believe that self driving vehicles is a reality but is not Uber business
Lol


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## Immoralized (Nov 7, 2017)

The only world where self driving car will become reality is when they remove people off the road entirely. Including people anywhere near the road and the side of the roads be either fenced off or barrier off. People have to either walk under the road or over the road just not across it.

The other challenge is to eliminate any drivers that actually "drive". Everyone has to be in self driving cars so all the cars talk to each other and know exactly where they are on the road. Which eliminates the needs for traffic lights and stop signs. Not only does this require complete complaisance and giving up driving altogether it give government and authority almost unlimited power now.

Track anyone and everyone since all the cars are outfitted with a dozen or so camera that is linked to the internet. Unless one decides to just live up in the mountains for the rest of their life it is always going to be recorded. Not that it isn't happening now but in the world of self driving cars. All cars will have to be self driving cars and that... I don't ever see happening even in a decade time so pretty much all fantasy.

FYI i enjoy driving  I enjoyed getting driven by an actual person too. Not some dumb machine that may or may not kill me or others on the road. The technology works in a controlled environment but the real world is anything but a "controlled environment". People jump onto the road... They run across the road. They crash into you for no good reason and a billion other things.


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