Anyone remember reading an old article about the relationship between safety equipment and risky behavior? The idea was that the more safe you feel, the more likely you are to engage in unsafe behavior. The example given was that cyclists with helmets were much less cautious of traffic than bicyclists without helmets.
So I'm not sure if this has to do with cars feeling more safe or just the prevalence of smart phones, but driving down the interstate and paying close attention to what other cars are doing is terrifying. Literally every day I see a number of people driving 70+ MPH and slightly drifting over the lines or driving with their phones perched in front of them on the steering wheel. And it is not just teens or other classes of people typically associated with risky behavior, it is everyone.
This transition from smart-cars to self-driving cars is scary. As the cars become more attentive it seems we get less attentive.
That's an interesting thought, but we are already incredibly inattentive drivers - as evidenced by the 33,000 automotive deaths last year in the U.S. alone. Self driving cars can't come soon enough.
Fortunately, the same technological advances that have given us hand-held computing to distract ourselves are also going to give us self driving cars to save us.
So I'm not sure if this has to do with cars feeling more safe or just the prevalence of smart phones, but driving down the interstate and paying close attention to what other cars are doing is terrifying. Literally every day I see a number of people driving 70+ MPH and slightly drifting over the lines or driving with their phones perched in front of them on the steering wheel. And it is not just teens or other classes of people typically associated with risky behavior, it is everyone.
This transition from smart-cars to self-driving cars is scary. As the cars become more attentive it seems we get less attentive.