Self driving cars will kill DUI industry

The DUI industry is not so much about safety as creating revenue. Similar to speeding tickets it's money a department counts on. They say their goal is for these crimes to not happen but when they do not there is pressure to make them happen. because the assumption is that someone is always speeding or driving drunk so if you as a cop can not find them you are not doing the job right. A good DUI bust can make a cop's career, there will be all sorts of raises and promotions. This is why it's common for them to charge DUI's with no evidence but their "gut feeling". Best case for them it sticks in court and they get a raise. And if the person is truly innocencent the court will prove it. Who cares if the person still needs to buy a lawyer in the cop's mind.

Personally I can tell you that they do not give up on a DUI even if you have a clean blood test. They will will pressure you to plea deal. It's a soft ball easy hit for the courts and cops. No one gives in.

I gurentee you cops hate things like Teslas that allow a drunk in theory to just hit a few buttons and make no traffic mistakes. That is why for years to come they will fight for a DUI= you are in the driver seat even if you do not control the car. Even long after self driving cars are accepted as safe and common. Right now the technology is more cutting edge sci-fi.

Sure I get that computers make errors and you should be alert but it's really about the money. It's the same reason why you still get a DUI if you are sleeping drunk in a car. I lost a friend to a drunk driver I don't agree with it but I also don't agree with the whole industry of shaming people over it.

 

Hey that's actually a great point. The last thing I need is a DUI. Maybe I should get a self-driving vehicle. Hmm.

 

Yeah... Get a self driving car. Then instead of a DUI, you can crash and burn while playing with your phone...

 

I’ve never had a DUI, I always though though that you couldn’t be charged without evidence?

 

i'm sure the laws are different in each state, but i know here there is some provision (i don't remember the exact wording) that they can give you a dui if they feel like you might be impaired, even if you pass your breathalyzer. and of course, if you don't take the breathalyzer it's an automatic dui.

not to mention those dui checkpoints. they're also not legally allowed to pull you over and search your car unless they witness you doing something wrong, but if they decide to put up a bunch of cones and station an entire police station on one highly traveled road on a random saturday night, they're free to stop and search everyone who happens to be trying to get home after a long day of work. that was really annoying when i worked nights and lived right next to a favorite checkpoint spot.

 

If they actually worked right, and didn't crash into people or anything they might be cool. But you're right, I don't think I can really trust them.

 

Honesty I'd still regulate them. If you're under the influence of drugs or alcohol you have no business controlling a car. Could care less if they're self navigating or not.

 

obviously if government, or the will of the people it may or may not attempt to respect, really wanted to reduce or eliminate the risk of people driving with impaired judgement, right of the top, the first thing, would be requiring any place where intoxicants are sold by the dose, to be accessible by public transit. telling people they should drag along a designated driver is on a par with telling them they should practice chastity. some people need very little or no prompting to be conscientious, and some can't even seem to get their head around the concept of being so at all.

no intelligent machine is going to infallably cope with unimagined conditions, any more, for that matter, is any human or other living creature.
there are certainly people driving cars though, that even a comodor c-64 could probably do a better and safer job of.

even without a pretense of democracy, governments are largely a product of culture, and culture of a kind of consensus of assumptions many people aren't aware of making.

the only way you're going to have people with impared judgement not creating hazzards for themselves and each other, is you have a bus or train, where the driver is insulated from the distractions of passengers, who can than, not have to be responsible, for its safety.

they still have a responsibility to not annoy each other of course.

responibility takes culture. the machine taking the place of irrisponsible behavior is a great idea, but people still, its up to each of us, to not mess up each other.
everything that improves the odds is good. what doesn't change is that we are still improving probabilities or we're not.

also i think the op's assumptions about law enforcement are not universally accurate.
the officer is as much a product of the culture we all participate in creating,
as ever last one else of us.
as individuals, as diverse in their basic perspectives as the rest of us.
though with the added responsibilities of their job,
not angels, not demons, but a little bit of everything.

and don't forget who creates the laws they enforce,
nor the process by which they are hired and the priorities of that process.

when you have bad cops, you have a community with a political climate that wants them.

 

natural selection

 

Good so things like this incident will become a distant memory ...NO



btw: in the most ironic twist imaginable, the victim confessed back in 2013 to a Hit & Run 50 years ago killing a little girl
but he couldn't be tried for the crime because of the statute of limitations in the state of Maine

Did this woman know and if she did, why did she wait 5 years to kill this guy?

 

You wont see self driving cars in your lifetime

 

Naughty children are going to take their parent’s self driving cars out for a spin. That’s a greater concern.

 

way better than naughty children taking their parents' regular cars out for a spin.

 

"Evidence" can be as little as the cop saying you were acting funny and failed the road side tests. Those testes are 100% office opinion there is no medical evidence for how the relate to driving a car. That is what happened to me. Nothing my blood but for a year I had to keep going to court and listen to the DA say all kinds of ridiculous lies. His story was that I took drugs so soon before the tests they did not have time to show up in my blood. It was silly.

 

put them on rails and power them by solar. too much pavement makes unpleasant microclimate, not to mention visual.
so we can give parking lots and streets back to nature. keep the sidewalks though. and bikeways.

never see them? they're a real thing now. they're just not any more infallible then anything else in real life is.
are the better then an average driver? maybe. are they better then an inconsiderate driver of which there are too any on the road, certainly.
are they as good as a skilled and consciencious driver? not yet. will they ever be? maybe. but do we need them? not really.

what we need instead is something like them on some sort of rail structure, very small form factor to turn in tight places.

its up to politicians and ultimately the public will, what kinds of infrastructure gets built and maintained.
and transportation seriously needs to be rethought from familiar assumptions instead of wastefully perpetuating them.

 

A self driving vehicle will always need a human to operate it, and operating a motor vehicle under the influence will always be against the law. No free pass. Still have to call the cab company to operate your or their self driven vehicle to get you home.

 

Interesting point in that I wonder if they will lower the driving age now? To say 14 years old- with limitations, perhaps?

 

the human is there in the form of the firmware and technology that operates it, having been designed and built by humans or other sentient life forms.

in a litigation addicted society, i'm kind of surprised liability issues have even allowed their development to get this far.

personally, yes i'd rather trust a computer then half if not more then half the drivers on the road,
but i'd trust the concept a hell of a lot more, if they were on some kind of guideway,

where if they go nuts,
they can still be prevented from taking out half the city
and landing in someone's living room.

"open the pod bay doors hal. hal are you there? can you hear me?"

(making abstract judgements in unfamiliar situations, adoptive learning is coming along, but not a machine intelligence strong point. hal did exactly as it was programed to do. a little too exactly was the problem.)

 

"The DUI industry is not so much about safety as creating revenue. Similar to speeding tickets it's money a department counts on"

Yeah, that is bullshit. Our department, and all the departments in the state, don't see a dime from both DWI arrests (fines) or speeding tickets. DWI arrests are not, in any way, tied to one's advancement in terms of rank, billets, or pay. I have arrested multiple drunk drivers and have never once seen an increase in pay, rank, or general standing within the department.

My decision to arrest is not based on a "gut feeling". It is based on observable signs on impairment. This could range from failing to maintain their lane, to driving well below the speed limit or late/frequent breaking. Added to this are signs after the vehicle has been stopped, such as slurred speak, smell of alcohol, and inability to completed simple tasks (such as retrieving their license).

Next come the field tests which, whether you like it or not, have been validated via the courts as having standing. The eyes never lie. The horizontal gaze nystagmus test is really all I need to truly tell if someone is intoxicated. There are other tests for drugs. The roadside PBT helps, but is inadmissible in court. The DMT however, which is what you blow into during booking, is admissible.

I do not believe self driving cars will kill off anything. Someone will still need to be in "control" of the vehicle in the event the vehicle needs to be driven manually. A sober driver will always need to be present. Sure, it will be harder to determine if a person is impaired or not from their driving conduct. Not impossible though.

 

personally i find the technology and its challenges more interesting then human political corruption.
at least they seem a front on which logic and intelligence have a better chance of making headway.

preventing needless fatalities, is only one of the many reasons, the whole concept of how we think about mobility and transportation, seriously needs to be rethought.
environment is an even bigger one. for me, even aesthetics comes into play.

i still believe also, that making it a requirement for a site to be licensed to sell a mind altering substance, such as alky, by the dose, for that location to be accessible by public transportation, would go a looong way statistically, significantly, more then enforcement alone ever can, and not with a culture of defying laws and consideration alike, to reducing the number of impaired drivers on the road.