And Tesla has been fully automonous since 2017.
Wouldn’t be the first time Volvo overpromised a bit:
Volvo plows into pedestrians during safety demo - YouTube
Volvo safety demo crash - YouTube
Fluff is fluff, and technology is technology.
The memes are actually just to make fun of your understanding of technology at this point.
So then there isn’t any need to shoehorn a bunch of money into an infrastructure bill to reinvent the wheel if the technology already exists.
From a dollars and sense perspective drunk driving is a tremendously expensive problem. Somewhere between 100 billion dollars and 200 billion dollars annually. Reducing drunk driving by even a few percentage points would make this an efficient use of funds.
Also, depending on their political bent, different media chanels likes to focus on potentially wasteful spending that gets their viewers blood boiling. What these media channels fail to mention is that the spending doesn’t materially matter. The vast majority of federal spending is on either popular programs (social security, medicare, defense) or non discretionary things like servicing the debt.
I can’t find how much money is gonna be spent on this initiative but it won’t be much hundred of millions or billions. Maybe tens of millions. This just doesn’t get me fired up. Sure you can say all the little expenditures add up and they do… but they don’t add up to much.
A pretty simple rule of thumb is if it doesn’t involve social security, medicare, medicaid, defense, servicing the debt, veterans benefits or federal law enforcement/employees/veterans pensions and healthcare it’s not gonna materially impact the budget. You want to actually save some money, deal with medicare costs and get the Air Force to stop trying to replace the A-10 with a less capable and 100* more expensive solution.
Also,
quote=“mllcb42, post:50, topic:378901”]
Why not? They do that crap all the time
[/quote]
I’n this case “they” are MADD. A unique lobbying group because they are bipartisan, don’t have much money nor real financial incentives but can mobilize high propensity female voters in suburban swing districts.
That said, I dislike MADD since they were responsible for, at the last minute, killing the bill that was going to legalize happy hour in Massachusetts.
I didn’t say it was foolproof technology…but obviously there’s a difference between having something and having nothing. Every component of every car, mechanical or electronic has probably failed at some point.
How about when the car is now 10 grand more expensive because some NHTSA BS that doesn’t work is shoved into it? Are you going to care then?
Awesome, where do I sign up for this? It will be cheap, for literally a measly $2.43 million dollars, I promise to deliver a very pretty report on how drunk driving can be eliminated as soon as someone genetically recreates a unicorn and we can harvest their farts for alcohol neutralizers by applying them to in-cabin air filters.
Again, I think, in part, the funding is to come up with something easier to use and more affordable if it’s to be eventually mandated on new vehicles.
Do you think pharmaceutical companies and the government aren’t both funding cancer research?
And to me, that’s the issue.
When I see this bill, I don’t see anything that’s actually going to help anyone. I see another poison pill tucked into a larger bill by a politician who is concerned about appeasing a special interest group and the power (be it money or votes) that they bring. Now, when someone wants to vote against/modify an infrastructure bill, someone will point at them and say “how dare you vote against stopping drunk driving, you monster”.
Unfortunately, this sort of stuff happens day in, day out, by both sides of the aisle. It’s a major issue in our current funding system.
People who died in Tesla auto pilot crashes would tend to disagree with you on something is better than nothing. (for a few people who are going to go all apeshit on this, this is not about Tesla, just the most blatant automotive example of “beta” technology not used / working properly)
It’s cheaper, especially if it finds a viable solution, than the estimated $200+ billion it costs taxpayers now dealing with the societal costs of drunk driving.
Insert my own strawman
I think that shoehorning a generic cancer research fund that says “we’re going to contemplate our navel” into a voter rights bill serves only as a tool to yell at people voting one way that “they must hate people with cancer” and does nothing to actually advance cancer research.
But you just told us Volvo has a viable solution
I’m not saying I did agree with you on this point…but there is a big difference on labeling something “autopilot” and saying your car is self driving when it’s technically not. Nobody, including Volvo, has ever advocated for or marketed people to drive drunk. Nor would anyone ever do that.
Plus, I find it ironic that your advocating for the people that have been unfortunately killed because of Tesla’s misinformation, but not for those that have been killed by drunk drivers. Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying though.
Let’s ask this in a way more basic way:
If the goal is to prevent drunk driving deaths through researching these tools, why not just introduce a bill to do that?
I’m confused now, are we pro cancer now? and is drunk driving good or bad for cancer research? Finally I demand to know how much money did Volvo spend on cancer research! I admit there is a good chance that I’m not keeping up with all the goal post moving and strawmen, but as someone who pays taxes I believe I’m entitled to my answers!
Cars are so much safer now due to implementation of new tech be it seat belts, air bags, crumpled zones, ABS etc… They all cost money to study and then implement. I’m fine with the NTSB spending a small amount of money (in government terms) to try and reduce drunk driving.
Some things works and some don’t. 60 years ago the argument would have been about the NTSB reaserching seatbelts, 30 years ago crumple zones, 20 years ago airbags. Sure some things don’t pan out like auto seatbelts. But cars are so much safer today than they were 50 years ago and that is mostly because the government forced them to make safer cars.
Cancer has nothing to do with voting rights…roadway safety has everything to do with our roadways.
Exactly! My point entirely. Technology and new advances don’t materialize out of thin air.
Neither the seatbelt nor the airbag were the result of gov funding.
That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, I certainly think it probably would be more advantageous to have a stand alone bill to debate the merits. But to say that an issue of roadway safety doesn’t belong in an infrastructure bill that deals in large part with our roads, highways, bridges, etc. is just incorrect.
But the feasibility of mandating them was.