My point still stands. The people buying Tesla can afford to pay the full price. I don't think they're at all in jeopardy without them, therefore we're not really getting any benefit out of the subsidies going to Tesla. When hybrids were new, and it was just the Prius versus the Insight, it made more sense. Now hybrids are common and EVs are following close behind. It's probably time to cut the cord, or at least target it to where EVs are missing, such as the more common lower cost vehicles.

I scratch my head a bit at situations like this because /. typically despises the well off and hates "corporate welfare".

If you really wanted to pay back for the savings in health care costs, we should be reimbursing the purchase of bicycles. EVs don't help the environment, they just destroy less of it. Bicycles have even less impact.

Yea, but the people buying Tesla can afford to pay the full cost. Why are we subsidizing luxury cars for the higher wage earners?

What do you think he's going to do, come right out and say that if things don't go his way he's going to start firing off nukes? There's only one reason to even enter the nuclear component into the discussion, and that's as a veiled threat. It's the same pretext he's using to invade Ukraine. It's not an invasion, no.. he's defending Russian loyalists.

I wouldn't trust anything coming out of a country that requires its bloggers to register with the state.

Yes.. the same rules: "where's my cut?"

Seatbelts don't drive your car or take control away from you.

The number of autonomous vehicles on the road is so absurdly low that the stats are irrelevant. Bicycles on interstates are incredibly safe because there are no bicycles on interstates.

Knowing the complex decisions a driver has to make, I expect any software solutions to need a lot of massaging over time. Recall that Airbus' fly-by-wire didn't have the greatest introduction to the world, considering they crashed a jumbo at the airshow meant to introduce the world to it. So there will be software updates. Many of them. And there's one thing that modern vehicles have in common. Most manufacturers have no provision for applying these updates in an efficient manner. There's either a service bulletin that no one pays attention to or a recall that costs the company a fortune.

I would like self driving vehicles too, but I have little faith that all the complexities of driving can be accounted for or accounted for enough that these vehicles won't cause more harm than good. At least in the near-term.

Never had my car seized. Not sure where you're going with that. Don't really care much about the natural disaster bit, most of us will be fortunate enough to never be in one. Public transport can only move so many people at a time too, so.. not sure about that either. Go to the 4th in Boston sometime and ride the subway after, it jams up every time.

The nation is too spread out for effective public transportation. The American Dream is owning a house in the suburbs. Those that don't want to deal with it, they live in the city and enjoy public transit. It's not what everyone wants out of life, there are always trade-offs. No "one size fits all".

Low speed limits and "traffic calming" measures lead to inattentive driving and road rage. I see it every day. All it takes is for one slow-poke to hold up a line of traffic and eventually the rules of the road go out the window. Accidents happen when people drive stupid, and limits that are so low almost no one obeys them, speed bumps/humps, road furniture, rumble strips, removal of passing lanes and such serve to make the roads inefficient and frustrating to drive on.

You know what would likely prevent a lot of accidents? Smarter traffic signals. Many towns have them programmed so poorly that people start to ignore them. Where do a lot of accidents happen? Controlled intersections. I love a good New England ice storm when it knocks out the power because some awful intersections actually perform better with the signals out.

Cars have enough safety features. Pave the crummy roads, take down half the signals and fix the other half to work more efficiently, and build more bike lanes. That's all I want. My car has more airbags than cup holders. I'm all set. If I want to communicate with another car I've got two fingers for that and a horn.

Democracy demands that at least 50% plus one agree with you.

This is going to make vehicles even more expensive. It's not clear how effective these systems will be. It's not clear how exploitable these systems will be. I don't want the authorities to have a simple way of ordering vehicles to do things that the driver does not agree to. I don't trust software to take control away from the driver. Then you're still going to have older vehicles (which will suddenly be worth a lot more money), bicycles, motorcycles, equestrians, etc that won't be participating in this V2V conversation.

Then, is this going to encourage drivers to be even more inattentive? I already cringe at the commercials that show drivers futzing with things in the back seat or picking stuff off the floor and the collision avoidance saves them. Great, but that doesn't mean you're now free to be inattentive! If anything, cars should be less safe and speed limits higher to force people to pay attention, or else.

Yea, the owner of the medallion needs his fortune for doing no work what-so-ever, meanwhile the poor immigrant driving the cab earns too little to live on. There's some social good for you.

I enjoy storing radioactive waste in my backyard. If you don't like it, move somewhere else.

Why does road safety always have to mean lowering the speed limit? Faster roads require more driver attention. If you set the limits too low not only will people not respect the limit, but they'll become inattentive as well. I'm driving at this slow ass speed, might as well check my texts or fiddle with the radio, this is making sleepy.. zzz... *crash*

I have mixed feelings on this. I do believe the people who are there to protect us need to have the right equipment to do the job as safely as possible, for both them and for the community. A Bearcat is a ridiculous vehicle for police to have, but.. there are rare instances where I can see it being useful without treading on our rights. If you've got wounded people dying and someone sniping at police from a building, an armored vehicle can help evacuate the wounded. Such a thing happened in my state a few months back. At the same time, that's a very occurrence, and for most any other task, absolute overkill. Yet, minutes count. If only the county (for example) had access, it could show up on-scene far too late to save people.

There's a lot going on in Ferguson. Militarization is only a part of that mess. The police have explaining to do, but that doesn't justify looting and destruction of property. I bet that a lot of the people involved in the nightly riots are not residents of that community. The residents are going to have to deal with this for a long time. No one is going to want to start a business or live in an area that has the appearance of being a powder-keg. Let alone wanting to move in to an area where the police appear to be out of control. It's not like NYC, where the benefits still out-weigh the negatives. I don't think they have enough people to be involved in the community, hard to do if you're always running from call to call.

Yes, the stepladders and multi-meters that my local force may have received could threaten national security.

The spreadsheets were there in the article with their own viewers. Froze my browser for a bit, I'm sure it's doing wonders for their web hosting.

Choosing not to save for retirement is the same as getting diagnosed with cancer? Horrible analogy. I don't know when or if I will get sick. I purchase insurance to guard against the unknown. I do know that I'm going to need to support myself after I retire, therefore I save for it. No one is going to magically skip forward a number of decades and find themselves retired without savings. You know when you'd like to retire, and you should be saving so it becomes a reality. It's not anyone else's responsibility to fund your retirement because you chose not to.