I do what I can, but they can do a lot more than I can, because they've been granted a lot more powers. And then, at least as often as the rest of us, they use them for their own benefit.

The problem with that hope is that odds are, the USA is going to have to go even more sharply downhill (with terrible global consequences) before that can happen. I still don't think this nation is beyond redemption, if the people are catalyzed.

Those days are over, at least for the USA. We're definitely a net drain today.

Speed bumps just lead to more purchases of CUVs, which are too tall to see over, too low to see under, and too cluttered to see through. But they go over speed bumps real fast. Then the speed bumps just become something which decreases traction. Speed bumps are a bad idea.

How about you just move someplace that isn't becoming urban? Because traffic is a fact of modern cities.

Speed doesn't just cause accidents, it exacerbates them. Speed limits aren't there just to prevent accidents, but to make them less serious. Speed limits on highways without a divider are commonly 55 while divided is 65 because a collision at 55 is far more survivable than 65. Obviously, in a full-speed head-on, you die either way, but since it would require dropping the speed limit to something that would cause the road to clog due to lack of throughput, they don't account for that.

Look, we'd like to believe that, but we know that some of them are bullshit and they're only used to make money. Even the ones which could keep people safe are horribly unevenly enforced. For example, California has a law against riding in the passing lane when someone else wants to use it, regardless of speed, yet I have watched countless cops come up behind someone in the fast lane, slow down, then go around them. That's an easy ticket if they just flip on the front end camera before it happens, but they don't bother. If traffic laws and enforcement were meant to make the road safer, they'd pull those people over and ticket them for disturbing the flow of traffic.

If there are good cops, why don't they do something about all the bad cops?

Look, I like to go fast, but there is never a time when there is no safety issue to speeding. NONE. More speed means, after eliding a lot of stuff relevant to you, more chance that the locality, city, state, etc. will have to spend some money on you. Whether you fail, someone else around you fails, or some equipment fails, speed exacerbates all of these situations.

There is just no way in which you can rationally claim that there is no safety issue to speeding, ever. There always is. Period, the end. You can argue about whether you should be allowed to take that risk, but that's not the same argument.

You might want to read the comment to which you replied, where the poster stated unequivocally that the lights aren't flashing when preschool lets out. That's how you know it's a scam — the lights aren't flashing while children are present at a scheduled time every week.

Sure they do. I've had computers go into sleep mode spontaneously. In the car, the analogue would be an equipment or software failure causing the system to believe it was meant to be switched off.

If they're smart enough not to give the self-drive system other things to do that it can get wrong and thus spend too much time on them and fail at driving, that's true. Even logging could fall into this category.

Sure they do, at least, computer hardware does fail, just like our hardware.

Right up until the sensors ice over, or whatever. When your eyelids have ice crystals on them, you can blink a bunch and get partial vision back. This in particular is what is holding self-driving cars back now, and for that matter, self-flying planes. If the stall indicators fail for any one of several reasons then your only hope is that the pilot will feel what's happening and correct it. We'll have to turn vehicles into a rolling collection of redundant sensors to fix this problem, and the cost of the car will double.

Who needs a human to get into a long-haul truck at all? Let the computer drive it between freight depots located directly on the highway, shift the load automatically (using intelligent fork lifts) to smaller trucks, and send those out into the neighborhoods. It would be both cheaper and easier than having OTR trucks actually drive into towns.

The evolution of automobiles doesn't come evenly, it comes in lumps. So it certainly is possible, and given how many automakers are working on self-driving cars, it actually seems likely.

I'm the kind of agnostic who believes that if there is a god their existence COULD be demonstrated, but it doesn't mean that it WILL be and in any case it NEVER HAS BEEN, the last point being the most relevant to agnosis. What do you call that?

And every web host I've ever used long enough to notice has updated PHP and then you have to go into cPanel to change the version you're using. Perhaps your hosting companies were doing the same, and you simply failed to notice.

The problem is that humans can't multiprocess*, we can only multitask via task-switching, and it's primarily-cooperative multitasking to boot. You can't just abandon your task anywhere and switch to another one, you've got to get to a stopping point and then discontinue your current task and switch to another. Otherwise you lose work, break things, etc. So while you can't see the issue with concentration, you're still suffering from it. You've just learned to live with it, and to expect inefficiency.

* there are some indications that we can work on up to two tasks simultaneously, but both suffer and one definitely suffers a lot

Really? Name one. Provide citations.

If you're friendly, a) why are you a coward, and b) why are your laws so shitty?

If your culture is harmful to others, it needs to be changed, whether you like it or not. If you won't do it, we'll do it for you. You are invited and encouraged to get with the times on your own.