Another bicyclist hit by a car, this one was killed.
Widespread texting made me give up road riding. I was mountain biking on a jump line last week and tried to knock a tree down with my face, I got right back up. If you eat it on a street, the road rash will make you cry for a couple days.
Do you see the pic of my wreck last year?
I don’t recall, maybe?
Dayum! Bike as in motorcycle or bike?
I did have a mountain biking friend wipe out and slap his thigh against a tree so hard he thought the bone snapped. It was not broken but the entire thigh was shades of yellow and purple for over a week.
Holy MoG, that looks PAINFUL!
I take it you fully recovered?
People are horrendous drivers. I hate heavy government meddling, but I am perfectly willing to make an exception for aggressive licensing screening/training, and more suspensions/revocations for recklessness.
Perfect world, we’d have a network of competitive private roads, and govt would be mostly uninvolved. But obviously that is not happening in this century or next.
Cars will be self-driving long before next century.
How about we change the language we use to describe these events.
I’m not saying for a second the accident is his fault but I’m surprised his contract didn’t rule out riding a bicycle on a street.
Bradley? He’s long retired.
I clearly don’t follow NBA.
That prediction has become a cliché since so many tech nerds repeat it uncritically. But it is not going to happen nearly as quickly as they think.
Lots of state & local governments have to buy off on this to make it truly universal (& mandatory), and many have constituencies that are not eager to put all of our lives in the hands of computer programs in dynamic, often unpredictable situations.
Furthermore, plenty of roads are unmapped/poorly labeled in databases. And tons of them are poorly paved, with eroded paint lines, yuge potholes, etc.
Before next century, likely. Long before? Not so sure.
Great post!
Bicycle.
Hurt like hell for several weeks but did zero damage to the bike and no long term damage to me.
The mandatory part would be quite tricky. Even when there are lots of self-driving cars on the road, there will still be plenty of leftovers. Hell, my FIL still has a 60s or 70s era pickup.
Roads being poorly mapped is not so much the issue. They use cameras. When I test drove the Tesla this week, it showed every car and other potential hazard, knew when the light had changed, etc. And I wasn’t even using much of the self-driving features.
The tech is probably already better than most human drivers. But confidence in the tech will lag well behind the capacity, so it will take a while.
A question I’ve never read the answer to, is who is considered at fault if a self driving car runs over somebody? The guy behind the wheel or the manufacturer?
Completely agreed.
Tesla is an impressive company, really have to hand it to them for all the changes they have invented.
I have no doubt the driver program is far more reliable & safe in 99% of situations, but I still want to know I can click it off, because situations are complex & unpredictable, and no program can account for every contingency.
With that said, I routinely observe far too many listless, passive, unconscientious shitheads behind the wheel. People that ought not to have licenses, but realistically have no chance of losing them.
So, despite my ideal-world preference, I welcome the advent of the autopilot mandate. I just think the hurdles will be more formidable than the geeks realize, perhaps by a long shot.
Currently, the driver is legally responsible. That doesn’t necessarily mean people won’t sue the manufacturer.
They’ll have to pry my manual transmission low tech car from my cold dead fingers. My son is 22 and he’s said he always own a manual transmission car.