No doubt AI on the roads is a coming--and growing--thing, and I can see the positives, especially with drivers like people in TV, who may (make that certainly) be experiencing diminishing abilities in perception, peripheral vision, reaction time, judgment, etc. etc. But I would see it more as an insurance; something that can help the driver by replacing some of the abilities that he or she is losing, rather than as a replacement for the driver, even though that seems to be being envisioned for the future.
But there is a definite downside, one that a lot of people don't seem to be thinking about. I (just about all of us here, probably) grew up and learned to drive in an era where knowing how to check and change your own oil, check tire air routinely, how to control a car that before the advent of AWD (FWD was just coming onto the scene) and a non-limited-slip differential meant that having the rear of the car slew sideways in rainy or icy conditions was a real possibility, checking headlight alignment routinely, etc., were all things we learned, and more, early on. Many of us got to be pretty good with a wrench, screwdriver, socket set and timing light to the point where we could do a pretty competent tune-up in our own driveway when the Family Truckster started backfiring or just wasn't as peppy as it should be. Oh--and we could also do things like read a roadmap, use a compass, change a tire, drive a manual transmission, and many other things that have gone pretty much by the wayside.
Technology is a wonderful thing. But when we become totally dependent on it, what happens if suddenly it's not there any more?
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