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Driving is dangerous and GM wants to make it more so. Now we have
a device by GM which panders to idiots. They hope to sell it with
every car. It lets a person listen to their E-mail or surf the
web while they are driving. They say it's safe because it's not
a hand held device. I submit that they missed the point. Driving
one handed is perfectly safe so long as one pays attention to
the vehicle and the traffic.
Any device which takes your attention away from your driving is dangerous no matter how many hands you have free. If you are talking on the phone or listening to E-mail or any other personal message, it is taking too much of your attention. That redirection of attention is what causes the accidents, not the number of hands you are using. Some handicapped persons only have one hand to use. When is the last time you heard of a handicapped person causing an accident? They don't, because they pay very careful attention to their driving.
GM really knows this, but they want to sell products, so they give this dishonest advertizing hype to the media fools. The media, of course, loves it and propagates it. Causing an accident while deliberately distracting your attention with some kind of communication device should carry the same penalty as drunk driving.
The worst part of this is, we should not be driving anyway!
We have the technology, right now, to create a completely driver independent vehicle navigation system. I'm talking about a system where the driver is superfluous. He could use his stupid cell-phone to his tiny hearts content. According to all the budget surplus horse manure we hear from Washington, the government even has enough money to finance the installation of the fixed part of the system. It just need reliable passive road markers on every road. They could be embedded beside the road or hung on posts. These could be some kind of magnetic strip, similar to what we now have on our credit cards.
The mobile part, in the vehicle, would not cost more than the much vaunted on-star garbage costs now. It doesn't need a damn fool satellite system. All that's needed is a scanning device in the vehicle to read the passive markers. This tells the vehicle exactly where it is. The passenger, no longer a driver, simply enters the end coordinates into the system and initiates the start procedure. Then he can sit back an play with his toys or whatever. He may also want to enter things like fastest route, scenic route, or shortest route.
Collision avoidance should also be in the vehicle, and not in the fixed part of the system. The big two and that foreign company are already developing collision avoidance. They only need to cooperate, standardize, and finish the development. If they spent half the funds on this that they do on bull crap hype, they could have it ready in a year.
How many people are killed in highway accidents every year? How many are maimed and injured? How many lives are destroyed? How much justification do we need? What's keeping this from happening are the evil, stupid politicians and arrogant auto company executives. It only needs a little bit of cooperation. They suffer from the not invented here syndrome. All they need to do is agree on one system and get it up.
Visualize, if you can a redesigned auto interior. It has a table and comfortable chairs which can swivel for view. There are no front and back seats. Seat belts and air bags are superfluous, because there will be no collisions. The passengers can play bridge or checkers, or drink beer. They should not care how long the trip takes, because they are being entertained, one way or another. If they get drunk, so what? They are not going to victimize someone else. They are the only ones who will suffer.
Will we ever actually get a system like this? Of course not!
The political hacks and the lying auto company execs will think
up all kinds of dishonest arguments against it. The only real
argument they have is, "Not invented here!"
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