A confusatorium for self-driving cars

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/03/17/poor-kitt.html

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So self driving cars are basically giant, steel cats?

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I understand this technique also works for demons.

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That’s what I came to say.

Course they often use Salt for that.

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So, the equivalent for human drivers is the roundabout, correct?

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They should set up shop in Philly. These work great with traffic - or a when pick up trucks block them & you can’t back out.

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confuse the car
guide it to the “buy” button
profit!

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I read the article about the tyranny of the pedestrian, when we can walk in front of any self-driving car (with enough stopping room) and own the road. Anyone believe this?

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Does anyone believe that autonomous cars will step when a pedestrian appears in front of them? I certainly hope so. And if the pedestrian is being jerk and just trying to impede the car’s progress for no reason I hope the car autonomously blares its horn at them.

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I predict a dramatic increase in both carjacking, and the perpetrators being caught in a road block. Also, kids being prosecuted for drawing on the road with chalk.

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Must be a Cat-dillac!

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Sorry, but we Europeans take to roundabouts like ducks to water.

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Are you implying American drivers aren’t human? And that all European drivers take to them like ducks to water? What about people on other continents? For what it’s worth, I’ve no problem with them.

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Well, yes, I am implying all European drivers take to them like ducks to water. I’d wager it is almost impossible to pass a driving test in Western Europe without learning how to take roundabouts in your stride.

And, of course, Americans are a sub-set of ‘human’, not ‘not human’ - apologies if the deletion of ‘human’ made you think otherwise … ‘human American’ would have sufficed, I guess.

I once asked a US tow truck driver why no roundabouts in US. He thought for a while and declared that most American drivers would not give way in the way one does in Europe, without a stop sign or red light.

There is an equivalent for European drivers: if you want to bring a European to a dead halt (like the cat in a ring or driverless car in that video) then put them in front of a four-way stop. :wink:

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Well, some of us who drive in the US are human; you’ve succeeded in mollifying me.

There’s a few tony suburbs north of Detroit, MI, where the residents tried to dismantle the roundabouts because they don’t like them. They (the roundabouts, not the residents) were constructed to take the place of traffic lights. We make fun of people in those suburbs.

Well, now it all makes sense! Thank you!

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I’ll tell everyone else in New Jersey and Massachusetts to stop using them then, since we apparently don’t have any.

Maybe the ones we have are secretly warped in from afar…

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The guy I spoke to did not know what roundabouts were. I missed out the part where he was silent for many minutes after I asked him (and feared I had offended him, which might have been problematic as he was towing my hire car and returning me to the hire car depot) and eventually piped up…“do you mean traffic circles?” So I assume that’s what they actually use in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and not roundabouts. :wink:
And in the southern state I was in, he further averred that ‘freedom’ meant drivers would simply not co-operate in the way that traffic circles demanded - stop lights and stop signs were the only way to make it happen. I decided not to ask about the several yield signs we passed.

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