Unspeakable, unimaginable, impossible to write in a sentence on HN?
To me the root cause is that 2-ton metal bricks shouldn’t be propelled at 50 kph, much less 140 kph, by tired hairless apes with tired ape reflexes, ape kids in the backseat, listening to other apes on podcasts, or talking even hands free with ape friends or ape spouses.
We were never designed for this. It’s guaranteed to be a leading cause of death and life-changing injury, so long as we keep it up.
Is that unthinkable or unspeakable? I say it on HN all the time.
We've built an environment (in the US, at least) where driving a car is basically a requirement to participate in society. So, people drive, whether they want to or not. And they drive whether they're physically or mentally capable of doing so successfully.
And we're so entrenched in this design that discussion of a change is met with derision and scorn.
We weren't designed for anything. We take metal from ore and make metals which we shape and make thin to cut other apes in some cases to make them better even.
If you were to have 80% of adults performing surgery every morning and every evening, tired and distracted, you wouldn’t be surprised when surgical accidents become the #3 cause of death.
You can say that fine. It's a reason I'm keen on self driving tech. Which usually on HN leads to a conversation along the lines of it'll never work, Musk is a fraud... but Waymo actually works... and round in circles.
On a more immediate time frame, road engineering can work really well which is why deaths are like 5x lower in places like Holland. Put bends and obstacles in the road and drivers will either have to pay attention or hit them.
We are not apes. Apes can't design, manufacture, distribute, and buy automobiles. Apes can't drive. At all. Thank God we are not apes nor live, nor travel like them. We are able and should create technology that betters our lives. We can and have made reasonable cost/benefit decisions on risks required for these technologies.
Unspeakable, unimaginable, impossible to write in a sentence on HN?
To me the root cause is that 2-ton metal bricks shouldn’t be propelled at 50 kph, much less 140 kph, by tired hairless apes with tired ape reflexes, ape kids in the backseat, listening to other apes on podcasts, or talking even hands free with ape friends or ape spouses.
We were never designed for this. It’s guaranteed to be a leading cause of death and life-changing injury, so long as we keep it up.
Is that unthinkable or unspeakable? I say it on HN all the time.