Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on September 5, 2018
Why Human Driving Will Never Die
I recently watched some of my old Cannonball Run videos, and I couldn’t stop thinking how much safer I would have been if no one else had been driving. Those pesky untrained commuters. So dangerous. Actually, everyone would have been a lot safer if I hadn’t been driving either. If everyone else had been in a self-driving car at the speed limit, and I had been in a self-driving car I’d hacked to go 140 mph, I could have helped my co-driver look out for police trying to stop us. Two sets of eyes are safer than one, and there’s no rule that says a human has to be driving, although there should be. For now.
But human driving will never die.
Let’s be clear: I love technology. ColecoVision with the tape drive? Uh huh. Vectrex? YES. Capsela? Of course. When the Kenner X-Wing toy came out in ’78, I wore my kiddie brown belt so no one would try to cut in front of me in line. That Sony Aibo robot dog that cost $3000 in 2000? Of course it was terrible, but I had to have one. Palm Pilot with cellular add-on? Apple Newton? Mini Disc? LaserDisc? Gotta collect ’em all.
The biggest technology fans on the planet—and I’m talking about those investing in and working on self-driving cars—don’t want human driving to die. I mean they do, but to them all those shared, self-driving cars are for the little people. The investors and engineers? If they don’t already own Porsches, Ferraris or McLarens, they’re just waiting for their acquisition or IPO.
If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been keeping up with sports car sales in Silicon Valley, which has Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche and Lamborghini dealerships, and is home to the largest Corvette dealership west of the Mississippi.
But sports cars and human driving will become like horses, right? Please. If all the people invested in self-driving really believed that, Skip Barber wouldn’t have gone bankrupt and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) would be bigger than the NRA. Sorry, but the horse analogy doesn’t work, because a much higher proportion of people own cars than ever owned horses. Forget peak oil; let’s talk peak horse. We hit peak horse about a hundred years ago, and the proportion of the total human population who owned horses was miniscule. Cars? Sales have never been better, and cars are a lot hardier than horses. Also, a lot harder to kill, and they don’t run away.
What is self-driving supposed to solve, anyway? Pollution? Electrification solves that. Sharing does too. And trains. Or bikes, scooters and walking. Safety? Skip Barber’s one-day driving school costs $1,000. Will I be able to buy a self-driving car that can drive anywhere I can, as safe as or safer than I can, in my life time? Unlikely. But even if I could, the self-driving option is going to cost a lot more than $1,000. It has to. Even if the cost of all the necessary sensors falls well below $1,000, the R&D necessary to make it happen—now surpassing $80 billion—must be recouped. That’s not going to happen by selling it one time for $1,000, or even $2,000. BMW tried to charge people $300 for Apple Carplay. Then they dropped it to $80 a year (still criminal). Worse, it’s insulting. Anyone with a brain will just bluetooth into the car using iTunes on their phone. Because people are smart.
The only way self-driving “works” is A) it’s deployed only where it works, and B) it’s profitable to deploy. That means geofences, and you can’t buy it. Self-driving will become part of rentership culture, which is what the toxic wing of capitalism has been trying to foist on hardworking Americans for decades. When you rent everything and own nothing, your life isn’t your own. Add cars to that mix—and especially a car that limits where you can go—and your destiny isn’t your own either.
The future is almost here, but it will be tightly geofenced. Human drivers will be the only ones not trapped in its invisible cage.
Let’s get real. What do people really hate? Is it driving? No, it’s boredom. Driving is fun. Driving in traffic is boring. Also, it sucks. No one in their right mind likes traffic. Traffic is why I take the subway. Or a train. Or a bike. Or a scooter. Or I walk. If I’m going to drive, it’s because I have to—in which I case I’d welcome a self-driving mode in traffic—or because I want to, specifically because it has a steering wheel.
Which brings us to the big secret.
Even if self-driving cars work perfectly, human driven cars—and especially human-owned cars—serve a purpose no AI-controlled pod can, at any price, even for free. It’s not hard to understand what it is, or why it matters so much. Cars aren’t just tools, or even beautiful tools. They are organic forms, speaking to us literally, figuratively and subliminally. Cars help us see the world, and be seen within it. They expand our boundaries, and close the gap between our true and perceived selves.
More simply, what does a Jaguar E-Type look like?
Jaguar E-type
You know exactly what it looks like. You also know exactly why people want to drive them. It looks like the male organ that serves two distinct and necessary functions. One of them is very pleasurable. The other, not so much. Just like owning a Jaguar.
What does this Pagani Zonda look like?
Pagani Zonda.
The Pagani Zonda doesn’t look like the same thing an E-type looks like. The Jaguar is clearly male. The Pagani is clearly female. The Zonda, like every Italian sports car designed before the Lamborghini Countach, looks like a beautiful woman lying on her stomach, having just woken up, about to get up. She is very expensive. I refer to the Pagani, of course.
What does a Porsche 911—perhaps the most iconic sports car of all time—look like?
Do I have to tell you what this is?
There it is. A beautiful German woman lying on her stomach, having just woken up, about to get up. If you question the accuracy of this metaphor, then, like jazz, you’ll never understand.
How about the Citroen SM?
Nothing is more French than the Citroen SM.
Beautiful. Confused. This French classic somehow manages to combine the aesthetic of both male and female organic forms, in one car.
What about Morgans?
The Morgan Aero 8
There is absolutely no reason Morgan should still be in business. Trust me, I own one. But wait, there is one reason. Morgans look exactly like cars used to, back when car designers chose only the most sexualized organic shapes. Morgans speak to us on a fundamental emotional level, which cannot be said of…
This.
The Toyota Prius
Cars serve two purposes: Transportation or Transformation. A Prius is the perfect solution for transportation. If that’s all we ever needed, self-driving would solve all problems. But it can’t, because human nature dictates that we are social animals. Like peacocks, we both see and need to be seen, which is we crave vehicles that are terrible at transportation, but awesome at transformation.
Vehicles like THIS:
The Lamborghini Aventador.
There is not one good reason for car doors to rotate vertically. That they can is the point. Not coincidentally, scissor doors look like wings. Scissor doors don’t make very good doors, just like peacock wings don’t make for very good wings. Transformation requires sacrifice.
How much are people willing to sacrifice to achieve transformation? Here’s the Porsche 911 Turbo.
The Porsche 911 Turbo
The Porsche 911 Turbo is awesome. It’s perfect. There is absolutely nothing to be improved upon.
So why do people pay more for this?
The Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet.
The Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet is inferior to the coupe in every way. Cost. Handling. Rigidity. Safety. That is, every way but one: visibility.
Not the visibility out. The visibility in.
Let’s apply that logic to the Tesla Model X.
The Tesla Model X
The Model X is a fascinating vehicle. It’s the most ambitious transportation device ever made—packed full of awesome yet totally gratuitous technology—and it’s priced far higher than transportation devices of similar functionality. It exists at the surreal nexus of transportation and transformation, forgiven its ungainly proportions for only one reason…
This.
Falcon wing doors. Conveying all the transformative messaging of Lamborghini scissor doors, at a fraction of the price. Those who say the X is overpriced are wrong. It’s vastly underpriced, delivery glowing mountains of transformative power to the owner/driver/passenger.
If humans were totally rational, and the logic of the self-driving lobby were sound, consider how different the world would be even in the absence of self-driving cars: Everyone would carpool, share and borrow. Fractional ownership or rentership would be the norm. Lamborghini, Porsche, Ferrari, Pagani, and Koenigesegg would all be bankrupt. Top Gear would never have been the most popular show in the world. Chris Harris would be selling hats in a second-tier manufacturing sector somewhere in England. The NYC subways would run on time. Everyone would drive a Prius, or the equivalent. Buick wouldn’t be a luxury brand in China.
Or maybe people are rational, and the cars they buy and drive fulfill a purpose the self-driving lobby cannot quantify, but we can. I can’t wait for a self-driving button on a car I own. But until it can drive anywhere, everywhere—including saving me from a hurricane, volcano or power outage — and even if it can—I’ll keep my wheel. Actually, make that the whole car. Because there are times I don’t want to be driven.
And if you have to ask, then, like jazz, you’ve got a lot to learn about human psychology.
30 Comments on "Why Human Driving Will Never Die"
makati1 on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 7:16 pm
A propaganda article for the auto industry, not factual or realist. Driving a personal car is a Western idea that is already dying. A fad that is fading into the sunset, unless you consider a horse and buggy driving. lol
Dark Fired Tobacco on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 10:55 pm
The writer doesn’t seem aware that self-driving cars will be dispersed in fleets, not individually owned. How fast will insurance companies drop individual policies when a crash with a self-driving car means a legal battle with Google and all those bytes of data showing whose was at fault? Who will protest the drop in accidents, injuries, and fatalities, trial lawyers? Trauma clinics? Auto repair shops?
Cloggie on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 11:30 pm
“The biggest technology fans on the planet—and I’m talking about those investing in and working on self-driving cars—don’t want human driving to die. I mean they do, but to them all those shared, self-driving cars are for the little people.”
There are far more little people than thosr “big people” who can afford Italian or German sports cars.
That’s why self-driving cars will win, because the per mile price will be slashed by a factor of 4-10.
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/by-2030-you-wont-own-a-car/
makati1 on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 11:35 pm
Self driving cars are a sick joke on the techie crowd. Never be more than a passing fad. Cars in general will be mostly corporate, government and military in another decade or less. No personal cars for the average Joe/Jane. Many negative changes coming. Be patient.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 5th Sep 2018 11:49 pm
Clogg
By 2030 you won’t be alive..
There I fixed it for you..
Cloggie on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 1:17 am
Self driving cars are a sick joke on the techie crowd. Never be more than a passing fad.
They are not ready for the city yet, but they are absolutely ready for the autobahn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b7rWGXqdME
We can already have a system where long distance travelers travel to the edge of the city or ringway by bus or bike and than wait on a bus-stop like platform, while staring on your mobile phone, fed by Galileo-information to see where the self-driving vehicle is that will pick you up in a minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2X1ehdJQSI
Anonymouse1 on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 6:38 am
Holy fook, are you ever dumb cloggen-fraud. At least davytruds idiot sock got that much right.
You dont get to decide, who, or what, is ‘needed’. Nor what gets built. You can yammer on for another 100 years about what ‘could’, or ‘might’ or ‘should’ be done, or built, but you wont have anything to say about it one way or the other. Way above your pay-grade.
None of hobby horses exist dumbass. Not flying electric, robo-cars, zero-point energy, moon colonies, robo-ships, kosher robo-delis, none of it. Not even president’ drumpf, The anti-zionist, anti-globalist crusader. (He doesn’t either, except in your fevered imagination). You really ought to try to get back to the alternate earth you originally came from cloggenfraud. Im sure, the PO.com’rs in that universe miss you and your endless ‘might’ and ‘could bes’ that you keep trying pass off as reality, something awful.
fmr-paultard on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 7:24 am
hey anontard why u attacking supertard (pbuh). it’s ok to attack eurotard though. if you’re whitey he said you’re his son. isn’t it insulting to have him say you came from his peen?
i wait for ur respond anontard
fmr-paultard on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 7:26 am
hey anontard i kinda like you, i’m starting to. politics is weird i hated you because you attack supertard but i liked what you just said. you’re not supertard though. you’re 4real, you keep it real bro
Cloggie on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 8:03 am
None of hobby horses exist, Clogmeister, sir. Not flying electric, robo-cars, zero-point energy, moon colonies, robo-ships, kosher robo-delis, none of it.
Electric flying does exist, Airbus and Boeing are working on it and they wouldn’t if they didn’t believe in it:
https://www.investors.com/news/boeing/
“Boeing Vs. Airbus: Who’s Winning The Electric Aircraft Race?”
Every major car company is working on the self-driving car:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dossier-the-leaders-in-self-driving-cars/
Most European governments are preparing their societies for introduction of autonomous driving, with my country #1:
https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/top-autonomous-vehicle-ready-countries/
Self-driving car is not a superfluous gadget, but offers huge advantages in terms of energy and cost saving.
Never heard of “zero-point energy”, never mentioned it. Straw man.
Moon-colonies. Although absolutely doable, Americans, thanks to kidnapped German engineering talent achieved to land on the moon, I can’t remember having this promoted as an urgent to do item. Later in the century, yes, but not now. Until 2050 we’ll be too busy setting up a renewable energy base.
Cloggie on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 8:03 am
But hey mouse1, how to put this discretely, maybe these topics are out of your league for a person of your demographic, that never invented anything beyond a giant ejaculating plastic penis:
https://i1.wp.com/urbanintellectuals.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/super-soaker-founder.png
But I understand this is abracadabra for you and that you love to think that you are quite the man if you merely can sneer about it. The reality is that people like you are a dead weight on society, just good enough to help crashing North-America through the floor from first to third world basement, which the rest of the world doesn’t mind too much (one competitor less, what’s not to like).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO1agIlLlhg
Keep up the good work, mouse1! You are working in Eurasian interest with your depressing, self-defeating, sneering presence.
Why don’t you begin a forum with Kenz300, who related to nobody and had a very limited opinion repertoire, but at least was not default negative like mouse1 (what happened to him anyway? Never over-came the Trump presidency?)
[part 2]
MASTERMIND on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 8:12 am
Annyoumous
Its obvious clogg has paranoid schizophrenia..
Don’t worry I bet he kills himself in a few years when the oil starts to run out..And he realizes none of his tech nonsense will ever happen..and he will leave note saying he was right with a bunch of youtube and daily mail links to prove..
LMFAO!
MASTERMIND on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 8:13 am
Hey Clogg
I have some magic beans I would love to sell you?
Outcast_Searcher on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 12:33 pm
Dream on. It may take decades to be good enough to be fully automated in all conditions AND be, say, 10X safer than humans, but self driving vehicles WILL arrive. And safety WILL be the key issue that forces humans from behind the wheel on public roads in time.
Strong chess players claimed loudly and angrily that chess programs would NEVER beat the strongest human players for two decades before computers eclipsed humans.
As someone who wrote a couple chess programs and had a career in humans, it was clear to me that it wasn’t if, it was only a question of when.
Chess grandmasters would angrily retort that I should respect their chess ability, since I was only a hobbyist in chess, in roughly the top 10% of US tournament players.
I calmly replied that they should respect my programming ability and expertise, and that one doesn’t have to be a chess grandmaster to observe chess programs making dramatic progress over time — strongly correlated with computer speed and thus search nodes per second.
…
But don’t worry. If you want to drive, there’s always private tracks, and you can drive for a price. As it will be an expensive hobby (as fancy performance cars already are), it will only be for the enthusiast. Like, say, boating.
So what? Having much better efficiency and safety for driving and parking will be good news for society, no matter how much the delusional deniers ignore the facts.
Outcast_Searcher on Thu, 6th Sep 2018 12:35 pm
A career in computers (not humans), re my previous post, BTW. I HATE the lack of an edit function for these posts.
Free Speech Forum on Fri, 7th Sep 2018 9:25 am
Americans think living in a socialist police state is normal, but freedom is not some textbook theory.
There are still some Americans alive today who will tell you that freedom is better.
makati1 on Fri, 7th Sep 2018 7:46 pm
All the techies think the world is going to be remade in the next decade or so when it is all going to collapse long before then and we will regress into an age before cheap FFs, if we are lucky enough to avoid a nuclear war. IF…
makati1 on Fri, 7th Sep 2018 7:49 pm
FSF, you are correct. Some of us are willing to live in a free world where your life depends on you, not some government goodies. Those willing to give up their freedom for fake “security” deserve their fate. Does a lion prefer the zoo or the savanna? Same difference.
Antius on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 4:20 am
Autonomous vehicles are hugely significant to any energy transition, because they allow the vehicle to be tailored to the journey.
In European countries, some 90% of journeys are <40km and 95% are <100km. About half of all journeys are <10km. But if you buy a vehicle, you still need the assurance that it can do 1000km on a tank of fuel and can be refilled in a couple of minutes. Because once in a blue moon you may have to make such a long journey. Hence all vehicles end up being ICE powered.
If vehicles can be tailored to specific journey lengths and routes, everything changes. A large proportion of vehicles on the road can then be short range. This is important, because most alternative options for powering road vehicles have substantially lower energy density than gasoline. If range never has to exceed 40km, there are a huge number of options for powering the vehicle. I used the rather extreme example of a solar hot water powered vehicle a while back. That is something that is very sustainable, but will only work for short range vehicles. Compressed air is much the same.
The big downside of autonomous vehicles is that they allow every journey to be tracked. For me that would be a bigger concern than simply not being behind the wheel.
Cloggie on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 6:43 am
Currently I am making one of those long journeys (6000 km). Arrived in Switzerland yesterday and now I’am en route to Venice. Next roatia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania until the beaches of the Black Sea.
Have to visit a petrol station every 400 km, which is fine. You have to stretch you legs every two hours=200 km anyway.
Antius on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 7:23 am
“Currently I am making one of those long journeys (6000 km). Arrived in Switzerland yesterday and now I’am en route to Venice”
Enjoy your holiday. Venice should be out of the busy tourist season by now. There are some fantastic pizza restaurants once you get away from the central tourist attractions that are quite affordable.
Anonymouse1 on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 7:41 am
Not to worry ‘Antius’. You wont be going anywhere in a robo-car anytime soon. You must dumb as cloggenkike here, if you think something called a ‘robocar’ can be tracked, but a gas-powered one, cannot. Too funny for words really. Anyhow, your already being tracked. If not by your oil burner, then simply through everyday, mundane purchases. There are so many ways you are, and can be tracked now, I have no idea why anyone would worry about non-existent robo-cars tracking potential as if that represents some kind of existential threat for you.
I am going to suggest a high-brow solution to the threat to your privacy these non-existent ‘cars’ pose. (Which also, does not exist).
Don’t get in one. Really. Avoid them entirely. This high-brow strategy, will be made super simple, by the fact the robocars , uh, dont exist. But really, the best way to deal with the threat to your non-existent privacy the non-existent cars represent, is to not to near them.
Might want to write that one down.
Davy on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 7:45 am
“I’am en route to Venice”
Say hi to my wife. She is spending a few days there before she flys home.
fmr-paultard on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 8:54 am
anontard, you disappeared when i said eurotard said you came from his peen. now you’re attacking antiustard. you’re a nazi but you also attack nazi’s. you attack supertard too. yeah he does have thousands of acres in missouri. i wanted to house captured jihadis there but he said no. you ignore me again but i like your post about non-existent robo cars. i agree, just look at the state of supertard elon musk. things are disintegrating before our eyes, very sad. what happening to our supertards? it went downhill after he lost amber heard
Davy on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 10:16 am
Paultard, how about a riddle?
Cloggie on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 3:02 pm
“Say hi to my wife. She is spending a few days there before she flys home.”
Deal. Tomorrow at 10:37 sharp, I mean Gestapo sharp, I will be sitting at San Marco, dressed in a long black leather coat, with a hat and sun glasses and a copy of the Voelkische Beobachter, with two holes in it, studiously trying not to draw attention.
https://goo.gl/images/U5EvAy
Antius on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 3:20 pm
Cloggie, that guy looks like the Gestapo torturer out of Indiana Jones. The one that has the medallion burned into his hand and whose glasses melt off his face when they take the lid off the ark.
Anonymouse1 on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 3:45 pm
You do not have any ‘wife’ , in ‘Venice’ dumbass. You couldn’t find the place on a map if you tried. More of your delusions. Which, are as vivid, and un-orginal as ever. Tell us about the .5 acres, I mean 500 acres you preside over again. That was a good one.
Hey speaking of that ‘wife’ of yours, is that incredibly fugly ‘woman’ that posted from your IP a few months ago, that wouldn’t happen to be ‘her’ would it? Funny how that alleged ‘wife’ of yours *always* seem to in Italy, on the side of the world from your vast estate and holdings (RoFL).
Cloggie on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 4:10 pm
“Cloggie, that guy looks like the Gestapo torturer out of Indiana Jones. ”
It is Herr Flick from the British series “Allo, allo”, where they are making tun of Germans, French and British (“Fairfax”) alike.
Probably before your time. Was broadcasted in Holland.
https://youtu.be/qngh6_vrKCM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Allo_%27Allo!
Antius on Sat, 8th Sep 2018 4:36 pm
Ah. It was one of my Grandfather’s favourites. Haven’t seen it in a long time. Very good. British TV is too polluted by cultural Marxism these days to display much humour.