Thursday, April 06, 2023

Driver assist technology could be used to enforce safer driving.

While I tend to feel favorable toward the police, I also understand the argument that "an ounce of prevention," from things like social services, is better than "a pound of cure;" only relying on police.

This same logic can apply to traffic safety as well. Driver assist technology and even self driving technology is becoming more prevalent. I've heard that we can pretty much make the cars enforce things like speed limits, but there is reluctance to do this from automakers and the driving public.

How about having a breathalyzer in all cars so the car doesn't start if the breathalyzer detects alcohol? We've had that technology, since the 1980s, as it is often installed in the cars of folks who have been convicted of drunk driving.

How about having the cars, themselves, enforce speed limits and having the cars refuse to do reckless driving? The human driver could still override these features given certain emergencies or the need for higher speeds in passing and so forth.

This isn't just my idea, I've heard, on the news, that we could do a lot more to make cars safer by just installing technology where the car refuses to do reckless driving. GPS could be used so the car knows the speed limits for each road.

Many of the problems, that cause folks to complain about police, stem from traffic stops. The cars, themselves could do more to enforce public safety.

Strong Towns suggests changing street design to encourage slower and safer driving. Slower style city planning is nice. I would appriciate it being a bicyclist and a pedestrian, but it does take billions of dollars in retrofitting. A quicker solution is to use technology, in the cars themselves, to enforce safer driving.

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