WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration is seeking public input on the operation of driverless trains and, so far, it appears railroaders and the public are overwhelmingly against the idea. In March, the FRA announced it wanted public…
I have never seen a topic with so many opposing facets as driverless vehicles including private automobiles, commercial trucks, and trains. Driverless cars may be statistically safer than manually driven cars because drivers cannot be depended on to follow the laws. But driverless cars can never fully assimilate all of the potential variables. And standby manual drivers will be lulled into complacency by the automatic driver, and therefore will be less likely to react to an emergency and take over manual driving.
The movement toward driverless private automobiles is 100% political with its foundation being the “Green Movement” and Public Safety. That is why government has fallen head over heels in love with driverless cars. A government that loves to agonize over every little detail of public safety has conspicuously thrown caution to wind when it comes to the perils of cars driven by robots.
Recently a bicyclist was killed by a driverless Uber car. This ought to be quite newsworthy because if flies in the face of what we have been promised. Yet I have not seen any news report of exactly what went wrong. From what I did see reported, I conclude that the Uber car never braked. The news seemed to forgive that because they reported that the bicyclist entered the roadway, in conflict with the Uber car’s right of way, and it was too late for Uber to react.
Yet, other details indicate that, at that point, the bicycle lane moves out of its right side of the road position, moves left, and crosses over the car lane in which the Uber car was traveling, and then reenters the exclusive bike lane on the left side of the car lane that it jus