[flickr]photo:3365356245[/flickr]
An actual robotic car. Cars driven by robotic software may actually be safer for our roads than cars driven by people because they never stop paying attention. Photo by j-fi.
You may have read about 10 days ago that actor Gene Hackman was involved in a collision with an automobile while cycling in Florida. And if you read about this on CNN’s website, you may be under the impression that he was hit by a robot car. Twice in the article there is a mention of a car hitting Hackman and but a driver of that automobile is mentioned 0 times. The robot car strikes again!
I want news media to write stronger, more accurate descriptions of the situation. I want articles about robot cars to only be about cars that are driven without a human operator (an article by Tom Vanderbilt, also the author of Traffic). When you discover it, tell the author and their editor that you want better information. I am republishing, in full, Travis Wittwer’s essay titled “#robotcar”: Continue reading How do you get insurance information from a car that presumably drove itself?