The whole design philosophy of the car is fucked and we have designed for failure.
"Individual competence" leads to over a million annual road traffic fatalities globally. Every. Year.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad when people die on the road. I just don’t think the path to reducing those numbers is trying to make the cars foolproof. Cars are dangerous. Perhaps we should require regular skills testing for drivers to make sure they know what they’re doing. There are definitely people who have licenses who should not have those licenses.
Skills testing would be a better investment of our resources than adding more attention replacement systems to account for a steadily-stupefying population of drivers.
The problem is that in many places there are no alternatives to driving. Taking away licenses from "those who shouldn't have licenses" restricts their access to regular life so massively that you don't do it unless there's no more room to doubt the decision. The question moves from "do you meet the maximum safety standards" to "do you meet the minimum safety standards".
The solution is to either make driving foolproof or to provide viable alternatives to those unfit (or unwilling) to drive.
The whole design philosophy of the car is fucked and we have designed for failure.
"Individual competence" leads to over a million annual road traffic fatalities globally. Every. Year.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad when people die on the road. I just don’t think the path to reducing those numbers is trying to make the cars foolproof. Cars are dangerous. Perhaps we should require regular skills testing for drivers to make sure they know what they’re doing. There are definitely people who have licenses who should not have those licenses.
Skills testing would be a better investment of our resources than adding more attention replacement systems to account for a steadily-stupefying population of drivers.
The problem is that in many places there are no alternatives to driving. Taking away licenses from "those who shouldn't have licenses" restricts their access to regular life so massively that you don't do it unless there's no more room to doubt the decision. The question moves from "do you meet the maximum safety standards" to "do you meet the minimum safety standards".
The solution is to either make driving foolproof or to provide viable alternatives to those unfit (or unwilling) to drive.