pete75 wrote:Cugel wrote:pete75 wrote:
It's people that are dangerous not cars.
If this is what you think then you've failed to grasp the essential nature of design. The design of a thing will prompt you to use it in a certain way. For example, you won't drive your car everywhere at a safe 8mph. Most cars are designed, advertised and sold to we their buyers as a fast and powerful thing with which to amplify one's status and (in the case of the males) macho posture. Many do so..... to excess.
But perhaps you think that you live completely independently of all the influences that affect the rest of us? You stand back making purely rational decisions and acts, ignoring the suggestions and prompts supplied by a thousand cultural artefacts...? Ha! You would be the first human ever to have done so, despite the siren call of various seductive things, including the very seductive motorcar.
Cugel
It seems some people are seduced by their own hyperbole.
As for design it's making cars safer not less so.
........ [snippety snip]
Many vehicle these days are being fitted with many of the features which will allegedly make autonomous cars safer than driven cars. Some of them can be switched off by the driver. Perhaps they shouldn't be.
Safer cars? This is a relative safety, though, since the things are still killing and maiming millions worldwide each year.
The fact is that a ton+ of metal hurtling along at 30-100mph right next to the likes of pedestrians, cyclists and, of course, other vehicles is a recipe for harm. Our personal transport systems as arranged for the car have an inherently dangerous design. But their design is also seductive. You and I think nothing of going at 40mph (perhaps more) through urban areas where that is the limit despite passing within a yard or two of pedestrians and cyclists; despite the possibility of cars, tractors and whatever lurching out of a junction, driveway or gateway.
"I have not had an accident yet", you may point out. I will merely point out the "yet" as well as the thousands who are still having (this year and every year) "accidents".
The safest car is no car. You may be right that some coming features of cars will reduce the killing and maiming. But don't count on it ever approaching zero. Still, everyone enjoys a wishful thunk.
Cugel