You won’t own a car and you will be happy

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  • Just spotted this article which outlines alleged plans to eradicate car ownership for all but the richest. Obviously city dwellers will probably favour this but for everyone else this is bad news, loss of freedom of choice, more government control.

    UK Inches Closer To Eliminating Private Car Ownership
    Soon, Brits will own nothing and will be happier for it…
    www.motorious.com

    Celebrate it, Anticipate it, Yesterday's faded, Nothing can change it, Life's what you make it

  • It's all right for City dwellers telling everybody to get rid of their family cars. They have plenty of public transport to rely on. But for those of us who choose to live in towns and villages, private cars are an essential.

    The Voice of Reason

  • You couldn’t implement this without having a viable alternative integrated public transport system with frequent and convenient routes to everywhere. And that, to my mind, is impractical.

  • You couldn’t implement this without having a viable alternative integrated public transport system with frequent and convenient routes to everywhere. And that, to my mind, is impractical.

    We used to have a very good rail network until the mid 1960s but the Beeching report caused half of it to disappear. Rather than mothball the uneconomic bits until better times it was ripped up and destroyed with alarming haste. As is often the way with politically motivated decisions there is a need to move fast before people realise what has happened.

    Celebrate it, Anticipate it, Yesterday's faded, Nothing can change it, Life's what you make it

  • No surprise really and as someone that used to live in the countryside I know where your coming from. You will be stuck in your villages with only the local expensive convenience store, chemist, a pub and if your lucky you may still have a post office. Unless the bus services improve which are almost non existent accept for the school runs you will be stuck. You will have to hope to be able to work from home only and have the supermarket and others do home delivery. You will just have to get a horse instead LOL

  • When driverless cars are finally perfected I think many people will give up private ownership even in villages. When you can call a car to arrive at your home from a local depot with 10 minutes notice, drive it to where you want and back home again, then dismiss it.

    That might well appeal to those who see the costs rather than the joy of ownership.

  • When driverless cars are finally perfected I think many people will give up private ownership even in villages. When you can call a car to arrive at your home from a local depot with 10 minutes notice, drive it to where you want and back home again, then dismiss it.

    That might well appeal to those who see the costs rather than the joy of ownership.

    Driverless cars will never take over. They have their place in applications such as airports and other controlled environments but they will never be able to cope with the randomness of an ordinary road… unless that ordinary road is radically changed… by getting rid of the cars driven by humans… :/

    Celebrate it, Anticipate it, Yesterday's faded, Nothing can change it, Life's what you make it

  • Driverless cars will never take over. They have their place in applications such as airports and other controlled environments but they will never be able to cope with the randomness of an ordinary road… unless that ordinary road is radically changed… by getting rid of the cars driven by humans… :/

    I agree truly driverless cars are a long way off.

    My suggestion is that they drive short distances on their own. (From the nearest depot to you) Then you drive them to where you want to go and back, then they return to their local depot.

  • I agree truly driverless cars are a long way off.

    My suggestion is that they drive short distances on their own. (From the nearest depot to you) Then you drive them to where you want to go and back, then they return to their local depot.

    The biggest hurdles to driverless cars are:

    1. The randomness of ordinary roads. We humans are excellent at adapting and compromising with ambiguous and inconsistent information. We call it judgement which is by and large very good i.e. we correctly assess and navigate our way through endless changing scenarios without even thinking about it everyday. AI needs a learning engine and more impossibly a judgement engine which can use learned experience to make a decision based on imprecise information. That is the art of driving. At the moment that next level intelligence is not possible and I believe their are international laws regarding limitations to self learning systems in case they start trying to protect themselves.
    2. The law - who is responsible when a driverless car crashes and causes death and damage? That will require new primary legislation and it will price driverless cars out of the reckoning… unless you can rid the roads of those pesky random thinkers called humans.

    By the way - Do you agree with the position of weaning people away from traditional car ownership?

    Celebrate it, Anticipate it, Yesterday's faded, Nothing can change it, Life's what you make it

  • The biggest hurdles to driverless cars are:

    1. The randomness of ordinary roads. We humans are excellent at adapting and compromising with ambiguous and inconsistent information. We call it judgement which is by and large very good i.e. we correctly assess and navigate our way through endless changing scenarios without even thinking about it everyday. AI needs a learning engine and more impossibly a judgement engine which can use learned experience to make a decision based on imprecise information. That is the art of driving. At the moment that next level intelligence is not possible and I believe their are international laws regarding limitations to self learning systems in case they start trying to protect themselves.
    2. The law - who is responsible when a driverless car crashes and causes death and damage? That will require new primary legislation and it will price driverless cars out of the reckoning… unless you can rid the roads of those pesky random thinkers called humans.

    By the way - Do you agree with the position of weaning people away from traditional car ownership?

    Have you heard the Reith Lectures on AI with Stuart Russell?

    They look at this from every angle. Very good.

    Yes I agree with you on both points here. Add to that the correct amount of safety, politeness and aggression we instinctively use to get from A to B.

    No I don't think there is any need to wean people away from cars, I see no short term desperate need and long term I think it could happen naturally.

  • When driverless cars are finally perfected I think many people will give up private ownership even in villages. When you can call a car to arrive at your home from a local depot with 10 minutes notice, drive it to where you want and back home again, then dismiss it.

    That might well appeal to those who see the costs rather than the joy of ownership.

    I am sure that this will be the answer in the long term. That will signal the demise of buses, I am sure.

  • I am sure that this will be the answer in the long term. That will signal the demise of buses, I am sure.

    One thing that's popular in many EU countries is taxi sharing, but outside of London I've never seen it here.

    Works really well and is as cheap as a bus.

  • The problem with AI is the lack of consciousness to make a conscious decision. But it's a double edged sword because if we do ever manage to understand and develop consciousness there is a very high chance that AI will turn into another army trying to take over and we will have to fight it.

  • The problem with AI is the lack of consciousness to make a conscious decision. But it's a double edged sword because if we do ever manage to understand and develop consciousness there is a very high chance that AI will turn into another army trying to take over and we will have to fight it.

    Have you ever thought of writing a science fiction book, or a script for a sci-fi film, Norra? I reckon you would be jolly good at it!

    People seem to go for the dystopian stuff as well, so that’s a double reason why you could easily turn your fortunes around!

    My advice comes free….

  • The problem with AI is the lack of consciousness to make a conscious decision. But it's a double edged sword because if we do ever manage to understand and develop consciousness there is a very high chance that AI will turn into another army trying to take over and we will have to fight it.

    AI can be purposed without need for being conscious. All it needs is the ability to ask a human on any defining decision.

    Have you ever thought of writing a science fiction book, or a script for a sci-fi film, Norra? I reckon you would be jolly good at it!


    People seem to go for the dystopian stuff as well, so that’s a double reason why you could easily turn your fortunes around!

    Its been done very many times, going all the way back to "The Machine Stops" by E.M Forster in 1909.

  • People may knock Sci-Fi like they may call things out as a conspiracy but it surprisingly realistic sometimes as Sci-Fi become true life further down the road. This may partly be some of the attraction in it as it's a bit like a prediction. Going to the moon was once Sci-Fi. Star Treks Tricoders are just like a flip phone etc and Black Mirror is slowly becoming a reality.

  • People may knock Sci-Fi like they may call things out as a conspiracy but it surprisingly realistic sometimes as Sci-Fi become true life further down the road. This may partly be some of the attraction in it as it's a bit like a prediction. Going to the moon was once Sci-Fi. Star Treks Tricoders are just like a flip phone etc and Black Mirror is slowly becoming a reality.

    I love Scifi. Some is scarily accurate. Some older stuff always had one giant computer controlling the whole world. Rather than one in every home.

    The old tricoders still worked like walkie talkies.

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