Ted Rall for October 18, 2017

Don’t need the car to be self-driving for that. Any car these days is computerized and can be hacked.

Poor designs should not be allowed in transportation, construction and medical devices. They should be tamper proof and intrinsically safe in a sane world, but … profit. Capitalism always wins over social needs … ask any politician.

Ted? Does anything make you happy?

I’d have some trouble turning over control to the car in the city, but on the highway? That would be heavenly.

Major Sun flares?? I don’t know … static interference?? Electrical kafluhuyism??? What could go wrong with an electrical computerized self driving car? With my luck I’d get the lemon.

Some places already have transportation you personally don’t drive. They are called buses and trains.

Elon just fired 500 people at the Tesla plant because they were trying to start a union. Consequently they are not meeting their production goals.

Negging?

When a car can parallel park by itself, I’ll believe in self-driving cars.

… then there’s the question of what the car ‘decides’ to do in the case of some dilemma that has ethical implications (think trolley-car problem).

If you really wanted to be honest this same conversation would take place, but the driver would be the one looking at their phone.

In order for the car to properly drive itself, it would best if it can “talk” to its environment. That means wifi, bluetooth, cellular… whatever means to communicate to other cars, roadside markers (who’s going to pay for, maintain, power these markers, strips…) and yes, this is the means to hack into the car, through its communication networks. And how about hacking into the road markers, to report a false position. I love driving on new roads and watching my GPSs going crazy to find where I should be driving.