<story><title>California to allow testing of self-driving cars without a driver present</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/27/california-to-allow-testing-of-self-driving-cars-without-a-driver-present/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KKKKkkkk1</author><text>Have you never had the experience of being on a crawling train and counting the minutes after the meeting you were supposed to be at has already started?</text></item><item><author>meri_dian</author><text>People are excited about self driving cars for their potential to reduce accidents by removing human error from the equation. It&amp;#x27;s not just human error that causes accidents though.&lt;p&gt;Human emotion in general causes dangerous situations. When we drive now, we&amp;#x27;re restricted to driving and driving alone. We can listen to the radio but for the most part we are restricted. Because of this, we tend to want to get to our destination as quickly as possible. We drive fast to get the restrictive experience of driving over with.&lt;p&gt;However if we were free to do other things, like get work done or sleep or watch TV while in our cars, I think we would generally be much more tolerant of travelling at a lower speed. While eventually our self driving systems may be capable of being very safe at very high speeds, I think reduced speeds tolerated by people could offer an extra layer of safety.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe_the_user</author><text>It seems you&amp;#x27;re confusing the effects of travel being slow with the effects of travel being unreliable. It&amp;#x27;s not the slowness of a train that&amp;#x27;s annoying you, it&amp;#x27;s that the train has slowed unpredictably.&lt;p&gt;That said, I suppose there&amp;#x27;s every reason to think traffic impacts of self-driving cars (more cars circling, waiting for passengers) would make traffic slower and more unpredictable.&lt;p&gt;Edit: And, of course, the people in the non-self-driving cars would get the slowness without any direct benefit to themselves.</text></comment>
<story><title>California to allow testing of self-driving cars without a driver present</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/27/california-to-allow-testing-of-self-driving-cars-without-a-driver-present/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KKKKkkkk1</author><text>Have you never had the experience of being on a crawling train and counting the minutes after the meeting you were supposed to be at has already started?</text></item><item><author>meri_dian</author><text>People are excited about self driving cars for their potential to reduce accidents by removing human error from the equation. It&amp;#x27;s not just human error that causes accidents though.&lt;p&gt;Human emotion in general causes dangerous situations. When we drive now, we&amp;#x27;re restricted to driving and driving alone. We can listen to the radio but for the most part we are restricted. Because of this, we tend to want to get to our destination as quickly as possible. We drive fast to get the restrictive experience of driving over with.&lt;p&gt;However if we were free to do other things, like get work done or sleep or watch TV while in our cars, I think we would generally be much more tolerant of travelling at a lower speed. While eventually our self driving systems may be capable of being very safe at very high speeds, I think reduced speeds tolerated by people could offer an extra layer of safety.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dopamean</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re not going to feel any better if you&amp;#x27;re late in your car on the way to the meeting.&lt;p&gt;I take the bus every day to work even though in total it takes exactly twice as long than if I took my motorcycle? Why because I like to read on the bus. It&amp;#x27;s not actually important to me to get there any quicker. In fact on days I have earlier meetings I just leave my apartment earlier. I think the idea that people wouldn&amp;#x27;t mind going slower may be real for a lot of people.</text></comment>