Should self driving cars be legal?

Today I want to argue on why self driving cars should be legal, even today, while they’re still in an early state.

According the the World Health Oranization, “Approximately 1.35 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes. “

The culprit? Roughly 90% of those fatalities are caused by human error.

In Cyprus, 958 road accidents occured, where 56 of them were fatal in 2015 and in 2017, we actually had an increase of fatalities by 15% from 2016, the biggest rate increase in Europe, so hooray for being first in something.

Since 2013 we noticed a stagnation in fatal road accidents at around 20% than 2010 and this pattern seems it will continue till something drastic is to happen.

So, can something be done to stop this stagnation? Is there a way to remove the biggest factor of road accidents? It just happens, we are working on a solution and I’m talking about self driving cars.

But wait, if self driving cars are the solution, why don’t we see them around more often? Aren’t they illegal?

Well, in some countries, like Cyprus, yes, it’s illegal for self driving cars to be on our public roads, but not in others like the USA, Canada, the Uk and germany, but a driver has to be behind the wheel. Car companies have cars being tested on public and private roads, taking data from drivers and the environment to improve their software for a road-ready self-driving car. As only some countries allow this, and only on certain roads, progress is being delayed and so car accidents still happen very often.

First thing first, self driving cars are classified in 6 levels, based on their dependence on a human interference and I will mainly be talking about self driving level 3 and above, which cars are capable of driving themselves on everyday situations while being aware of their environment and adjusting accordingly. Some level 3 cars are being developed today, while level 1 are already out to the public.

Surveys show, over 60% of people don’t trust being inside a self driving car and their reason is they don’t want to depend their lives on a computer.The thing is, why are they trusting others or even themselves on the road?

Humans have slow reaction times, and often make errors. They drive while tired, drunk, and focus our attention the hot driver in the car next to them. That’s how accidents happen every minute of every day.

In the past 3 years there were only 4 fatal incidents due to self driving cars. Through constant updates and tweaks, improvements are being made on making these unfortunate events even more rare.

4 fatalities in 3 years are still better than the typical 3 million in 3 years, and the difference is undeniably huge. A computer can process information in the blink of an eye and can anticipate a crash before it happens, taking the measures to prevent it. The roads become safer for not only drivers but for pedestrians, as 23% of fatalities are pedestrians.

Traffic jams are now part of everyday commute, what if I told you, we could also fix the traffic problems all cities suffer from?

Again humans with their slow attention spans, cut through traffic without signalling, don’t pay attention to the green light and stop abruptly, creating  a line of cars behind them.

On the other hand, self driving cars could talk to each other, start as soon as the green light shows and as soon as the front car starts, reducing traffic.

My suggestion is we even ban humans on the road instead of self driving cars, then we won’t even need traffic lights, as they are there to make humans coordinate with each other.

Humans could just relax, sit and watch a movie in their car or even sleep.

Companies relying on drivers have costs on wages and expenses for accidents and by reducing road accidents they could reduce their costs and make their services and products cheaper, benefiting both them and customers.

The problem is, for this future to happen, we need the hardware and the software developed with as few errors as possible. Making self-driving cars illegal reduces the progress rate on having ready cars on the road, having an opportunity cost on people losing their lives each day because a human driver made a mistake. We ought to make self driving cars legal and allow them to roam the streets, at least with people driving them for testing purposes and let companies monitor people’s driving patterns on normal and extreme situations, so artificial intelligence can understand how people drive, to integrate the cars into today’s traffic until humans no longer drive on the roads.

To conclude, self driving cars reduce traffic accidents and fatalities, make roads safer for pedestrians and drivers, reduce traffic and get you faster to your destination, help grow the economy and let you relax. It seems like self driving cars can only help so why not incorporating them today into the roads and see the labor coming to fruition.

Source: Transport Topics

You have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head. There’s also Rick’s nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they’re not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Rick & Morty truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick’s existential catchphrase “Wubba Lubba Dub Dub,” which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dan Harmon’s genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂

Source: Digital Spy

And yes, by the way, i DO have a Rick & Morty tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎

(copypasta from Reddit)

Why the earth is donut shaped

Most people believe in the theory that the earth is curved, a sphere. But as light is curved, we cannot really tell what shape is the earth we live on.

My 100% scientifically accurate theory is that the earth is shaped like a donut (a torus).

First of all, everyone will quickly question, why has the hole in the centre of the torus not been discovered? Well as said before, light bends and follows the curvature of the torus, making the hole “unseeable”. Logically, it is possible for a torus-shaped planet to form, so we cannot rule out the possibility that the Earth is shaped like a torus, and therefore the hypothesis must be considered as a potential model.

You cannot see the stars because when you look up at the sky, you are decreasing the amount of distance the light travels to reach the atmosphere, so it diminishes less. In these cases, it is not diminished enough to be reflected by the atmosphere, and hence we can see the stars.

The reason you cannot see the opposite side is that when you stand in the middle of the earth and look up, the light passes through the first atmosphere it reaches. However, by the time it reaches the second atmosphere it has diminished enough to be reflected, and gets reflected into space, so you see space.

Source: TripleM

(This is satirical, I don’t believe any of this. Adapted from The Flat Earth Society Forums)