[ExI] self-driving cars again

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Sat Jul 14 21:30:15 UTC 2012


On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 12:07 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Slate reasons this is a show stopper for auto^2s: they only go the speed
>> limit always, and no one wants to go that slow:

I don't see why they should not go faster than people...

> Another article I read referenced this article and took another view.
> They agreed that initially these cars will be for rich people. So the
> rich people, as usual, will either ignore the laws or get the laws
> changed to suit themselves. They will tune the cars to go as fast as
> is safe, depending on the conditions, and probably just treat the
> speeding fines as a business expense.
> Alternatively, they will get their tame senators to create special
> lanes for these cars. So when you are stuck in the traffic, the
> masters of the universe will be hurtling past at 200 mph.

I agree with Bill here.. I think the auto-autos will go much faster,
though 200 mph might be a bit of an overstatement. The government will
have self interest to make auto-autos popular because they mean less
road maintenance and construction because more cars can use the same
amount of pavement safely. It seems unlikely to me that the government
will force auto-autos to go the speed limit for this reason.

The Nevada law doesn't go into the details of whether an autonomous
vehicle needs to obey the speed limit.
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/hb2679p.htm
As laws go, this one is pretty simple... basically a one liner.

-Kelly



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