Rov_Scam
3hr ago
Tesla's FSD isn't the game changer that Tesla fans think it is; it's basically glorified cruise control. Driving a car isn't so much a physically demanding exercise as it is a mentally demanding one, and eliminating the need to operate the steering wheel only offers about as much value as eliminating the need to work the pedals. Even that wasn't as big of a game changer as automatic transmission; while both would become all but universal around the same time, for decades people were more willing to pay thousands of dollars for optional AT than to pay hundred for optional cruise control. And the demise of the manual transmission (in the US at least) was due to lack of consumer interest, while cruise only became universal because the adoption of electronic throttles on all vehicles meant that adding it was as simple as adding a button. But I digress.
The point is that until the mental aspect of driving can be automated, any autonomous system will be of limited utility. You mention the high loss of life due to car accidents. It would certainly be a good thing if autonomous vehicles could reduce this, but the dangerous nature of cars in general makes it difficult to fully automate. We currently have a system where each driver is almost 100% responsible for accidents caused by their cars. There are situations like Firestone Exploding Tires™ where car manufacturers have been held responsible, but these are edge cases, not garden-variety accidents. Removing the mental aspect from driving means removing any liability from the driver and shifting it to the manufacturer. Manufacturers will not accept this.
Consider a typical case where A & B are involved in an auto accident, with each sustaining injuries. The way it currently works is that a police officer would visit the scene and conduct a preliminary investigation and may make a preliminary finding of fault. If he determines that B is responsible, B will enter a claim with A's insurance company, and the insurance company will make an offer to settle. It's highly unlikely that they would contest the preliminary fault determination at this stage, but they may balk if A claims damages for injuries that they don't think are justified. If A is unsatisfied with the insurance company's offer, he can hire an attorney and sue B. At this stage, the insurance company will hire a lawyer to represent B, and the parties will take depositions and look at medical records. The accident report may be used as a guide, but A's lawyer will try to develop evidence to establish B's liability independent of the police report. B's lawyer may contest liability if the facts lean in that direction, but it's more likely that he'll try to challenge the damages to secure a low settlement amount. A has to prove that B was negligent. This basically means that there's a reasonable amount of caution that all drivers are expected to take, and that B failed to take the appropriate amount of caution. This could be because he was driving too fast, playing with the radio, or any number of other things that we all agree that careful drivers don't do. A trial is possible, but in normal circumstances once discovery closes both sides will negotiate a number that everyone can agree on, which will be within the limits of B's insurance policy. If A's damages exceed B's coverage limits, it's likely that A will settle for the maximum amount covered, unless B is independently wealthy and has significant assets. It goes without saying that since B is at fault in this example, he doesn't sue anyone. If he has collision insurance he will get compensation for damage to the car, but he won't get anything for medical expenses or pain and suffering.
Now let's assume A and B get in the same accident except both are in fully autonomous vehicles, A driving a Tesla and B driving a Honda. Both parties will file suits against Tesla, Honda, and whatever dealerships or subsidiaries are involved. This is not a negligence case but a product liability case. Neither plaintiff will have to prove that any defendant violated a standard of care, only that the product was defective and was a substantial contributing factor to their injuries. This will be easy for them to do; if two cars collide it is obvious that one of them did something wrong, and since neither driver had any control over his vehicle by design, the problem must be a defective vehicle. In theory, each defendant could conduct a forensic investigation and make the argument that the other car was defective and responsible for the crash. Realistically, unless it's a high value case or it's obvious that one car did nothing wrong, this is unlikely to prove anything that justifies the cost, and both parties will settle. The plaintiffs' attorneys are going to expect to get full value in these cases since insurance limits are unlikely to be an issue and, even if they are, the companies have deep pockets.
Each year, there are over 6 million reportable accidents in the United States. The average insurance payout per accident is around $30,000. My legal practice focuses on product liability, and there is no system I'm aware of where a solvent corporate defendant streamlines liability claims the way insurance companies do, so each of these accidents is going to generate a lawsuit. Actually 2 lawsuits, since both parties will be making claims now. And the effect of splitting claims among multiple defendants and not having to worry about insurance limits means the average payout will be higher. And there are legal fees to contend with, too. So assume that $30,000 becomes $40,000, and tack on $10,000 in legal fees, then double it to account for both cars involved, and we get to a nice round $100,000 per accident. (I'm keeping things simple and ignoring the effect of multi-car pileups, single car accidents, injuries to passengers, and any number of other things). More than triple the current amount, the cost shifted from drivers to auto manufacturers.
Tesla has already been successfully sued in relation to their cars' autonomous capabilities, and in one case the plaintiff was awarded an eye-watering judgment. I don't want to talk too much about those cases though, because they aren't really relevant to what I'm saying here. Those cases proceeded on a theory that Tesla failed to adequately warn the user and breached various implied warranties. As such, Tesla was at least afforded the opportunity to argue that the drivers had been adequately warned of the system's limitations and that they were responsible for those accidents by failing to heed those warnings. One can argue over whether Tesla's marketing creates a misleading impression of the capabilities of their products. What is beyond argument is that, in the case of a true autonomous system, Tesla, or anyone else, will have to end the throat clearing and market it on the basis that one can treat it like a personal taxi and ride even if they're asleep, or drunk, or don't have a license. Regardless of technical abilities, you have to add in the additional cost of taking on an additional $600 billion of added liabilities if these things become universal. That's a huge cost for one industry to bear.
One obvious argument is that self-driving cars are safer than manual cars. Okay, but how much safer? Remember, they have to take on approximately triple of what is currently paid out in insurance and lawsuit settlements for accidents based in the US. Reduce that number by 50%, or 80%, and it's still huge. And it underestimates how safe cars actually are. The 6 million+ reportable accidents a year sounds like a lot. But that's in a country that drives over 3.3 trillion miles annually. It's one accident for more than a half a million miles driven. If you drive 15,000 miles per year every year between ages 18 and 85, you can expect to be involved in two reportable accidents in your lifetime. Any assumptions about the relative safety of Tesla's current offerings versus normal cars is based on a woefully inadequate sample size. I'm sure the thing is impressive, but how many miles have you driven it so far? 10,000? 20,000? I'm guessing fewer than even that, but even if you drove it 50,000 you'd still have to drive it more than 10 times as far before we'd expect even one accident.
The final question we have to ask is what accidents are we concerned about preventing? I ignored this for the sake of simplicity, but the statistics I gave are for reportable accidents, while the average insurance payout includes all accidents. I only used reportable numbers because these are more serious, but in a large percentage of these, the police are only involved because one of the cars is undriveable. I was in two accidents in my life when my car was totaled, but other than the hassle of having to get a new car and deal with insurance, I was completely fine. I don't want to suggest that we shouldn't worry about these kinds of accidents at all, but they're certainly less of a priority than ones that cause serious injury or death. There are obviously solutions to these problems; I don't want to suggest that the liability questions are completely intractable. After all, we're already paying for motor vehicle insurance, and the cost will simply be shifted to another entity. Pay Tesla or pay Nationwide, take your pick, it's all the same. The overall point isn't that companies can't do this, it's that they won't. None of them are confident enough in their products at present to make this kind of guarantee, and consumers used to doing things a certain way will balk at the high premium they have to pay to cover the insurance premiums of a third party, even if they've technically been doing so for every company they've ever bought a good or service from.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I commented above, and those cases don't really apply here. Michigan v. Chesternut says that it's a detention if a reasonable person would feel free to leave due to an officer's is of force or authority. Blocking someone's path so they can't proceed in the direction they were traveling is a pretty clear escalation from simply wanting to speak to someone. The officer was certainly capable of communicating that he'd like to have a chat without physically impeding the kid's progress. This wasn't even a particularly close call.
The "feels free to leave" test comes from Michigan v. Chesternut. The cases you cited seem to ask whether the suspect would have feltn free to leave in particular circumstances that don't apply here, or free to refuse a search in circumstances that don't apply here.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The problem is that the cop didn't notice the gun until after he initiated the detention. If the detention were initiated based on his seeing the gun, there would be reasonable suspicion to retain and there wouldn't be a problem. Hence why the state tried to argue that it wasn't a detention.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
The exact same thing happened to me once at a car rental place, upgrade and all. Or maybe that was Bryan Garner; I can't remember.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery
I've read a lot of crime books in my life, and one of the things that's always interested me is suspect descriptions and how useful they are. I've read about cases where police failed to solve the crime because they seemed to focus on a description that wasn't very good, and others where they didn't solve the crime and dismissed good descriptions as being too vague. I've also seen authors excoriate police departments for not focusing on suspects who matched relatively vague descriptions. So during my time at the DMV I also thought about a rubric that could be used to categorize suspect descriptions.
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A Level 1 Description would be one that eliminates 90–99% of the population. This may seem high, but anything less than that isn't really even a description. If the suspect is described as a black female, well, only 12–14% of the population is black, and about half of them are female, so that eliminates 93% of the population right there. If the suspect is described as a young, tall, white male, 40–45% of the population is white males, eliminating children and anyone too old to be reasonably described as young and you cut that in half, and cut it in half again to get rid of anyone shorter than average height, and you're down to 10%. These kinds of descriptions are of little to no use in a police investigation and are completely worthless in a trial.
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A Level 2 Description is one that eliminates 99–99.9% of the population. These can be of some use in an investigation but are of little to no use in a trial. Suppose the man running from the scene was described as an African American teenager, short and extremely overweight. Take the 7% who are black men, teenagers being about 20% of them, divide by half again to get people shorter then average, then in half again to get anyone plausibly described as overweight (always use the larger numbers), and we're in that 0.1–1% range. But in most places there are going to be entirely too many short, black, overweight teenage boys for police to identify and question them all.
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A Level 3 Description would eliminate 99.9–99.99% of the population, but still include between one person in a thousand and one in ten thousand. To give a few examples:
- Caucasian male, age 50 to 55, tall, athletic, blue eyes, grey hair, driving an older model pickup.
- Caucasian female, 20–23 years old, brown hair and eyes, about 5'7", large breasts, extremely good looking, piercing in the nose and tattoo on the lower back.
- Hispanic female, 45 to 50, extremely short, somewhat overweight, perhaps 4'11" and 130 pounds, bushy eyebrows, wears glasses, blue painted fingernails.
These kinds of descriptions are of value to police and may play some role in a trial, but no one could be reasonably convicted of a crime based on them. It's also worth noting here that some of the attributes are changeable, and this needs to factor into the analysis as well.
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A Level 4 Description would eliminate 99.99–99.999% of the population, but still probably include a few people in any decent sized metro:
- Caucasian male, 40–45 years old, between 5'2" and 5'5", thin, long, sandy-colored hair, large glasses, large square face, smokes cigarettes, looks a little like John Denver.
- African-American male in his 20s, average height, muscular build, shaved head, several gold teeth, gold earring in left ear, prominent scar on neck. Very deep voice with trace of a Jamaican accent.
If you match a description of this specificity you should expect the police to come to your door, but it still wouldn't be enough to convict absent other information.
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A Level 5 description would exclude 99.999% of the population or more, aka 1 person in 100,000 or less. This is the point where you stop combining combinations of independent variables that belong to lots of people and zero in on very specific attributes that are themselves fairly unique: A missing finger, a particular tattoo, one green nipple, etc. At this level you're on the defensive; if you match a Level 5 Description, you're going to need an alibi.
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A Level 6 description is a description that applies to only one person: Fingerprints, DNA, being recognized by someone who knows you. A Level 6 Description is an identification.
The above is taken from an award-winning post I did about a year ago when something similar came up. I apologize for the long quote, but I omitted the formatting to make it less annoying. Anyway, it makes the point. If 20% of the population can be reasonably described as juvenile, and another 20% is wearing at least one article of black clothing, that description describes 4% of the population, making it a Level 1 description. If the suspect had simply been described as an Asian male, about 6% of the US population is Asian, about half of them men. Would it be reasonable to round up and detain all Asian men based on this description? Remember that the statistical probability of one of these being the perp are about 25% higher than a random juvenile with an article of black clothing.
And then you have to consider the area. This isn't some rural village. It isn't even some backalley urban ghetto. The robbery took place in Chinatown in Philadelphia, which is just outside of Center City. A one mile radius from here includes an estimated 57,479 people, likely more as it includes some of the most visited parts of Philadelphia on a Saturday night. One can expect there to be approximately 2,300 people within a one-mile radius of the robbery who fit the description. In my estimation, police need to get at least to Level 3 before a court will determine that, in similar circumstances, there is reasonable suspicion sufficient to allow an investigative detention, and at least Level 4 before you can start talking about a custodial interrogation.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path.
If you're approaching them from the opposite direction then yes, that's perfectly normal. What happened here is that the officer was following K.C. from behind, got ahead of him, and turned around, blocking his path forward. If a stranger did this to you in public, it would be highly abnormal and probably raise some kind of alarm. If a cop did this to you, it would not suggest that the encounter was casual.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
And what are they doing with that domination? They might be holding on to science by the skin of their teeth, but there has been no worthwhile contribution to any of the other fields for years if not decades.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by saying this. That conservatives are so inept that they can't create their own institutions despite the existing liberal ones not doing anything worthwhile for decades? Seems like low-hanging fruit if you ask me.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
If you're not going into a scenic rural area and building a facility the size of six football fields that employees fifteen people they don't have a problem with it.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
I agree with most of what @Shrike and @birb_cromble have to say about a Fabian strategy not working. But I want to put a finer point on it. Your thought experiment is in a pretty common vein among history buffs, and while these can be fun, as intellectual exercises they are often lacking. The reason for this is that the participants too often presume to second-guess the actions of the real-world participants with the benefit of knowing how everything ends. It's illustrative that you bring up Joe Johnston's actions in the Atlanta campaign and point to them as wise and prudent, in contrast to the recklessness of John Bell Hood. This is a pretty common take among Civil War buffs. Almost no one, however, says the same thing about Johnston's actions during the Peninsula Campaign two years earlier, or equates Lee's actions in the Seven Days to Hood's in Atlanta. It's because we know now that Lee's actions spooked McClellan enough that the Union ended up withdrawing from the Peninsula entirely. If you're going to take the position that Davis should have undertaken a Fabian strategy you don't get to apply it only to the situations where, with hindsight, that would have worked. You can't just tell Lee to not invade Pennsylvania; you also have to tell him to fall back to Richmond during the Seven Days, and to be prepared to abandon it if the situation became untenable. No stupid shit like dividing his army to attack a larger force. Of course, had the South actually pursued this strategy, the war would have been lost in 1862, even with an idiot like McClellan in charge of Union forces.
In 1862, Johnston had strategically retreated against a less aggressive general while he was more evenly matched in terms of manpower. By July 1864, he had spent the previous two months strategically withdrawing in good terrain for defensive battle. By the time he reached Atlanta, the situation had worsened. If I'm Jeff Davis, by that point I'm waiting for a telegram saying that he doesn't like the looks of Sherman's position and the only prudent thing to do is abandon the city before Sherman outflanks him, cuts the rail lines, and lays the city under siege. Remember that you aren't fighting some idealized war with the benefit of hindsight; you're taking a position on what Davis should have done given what he knew at the time, using the people who were actually involved. Whatever ideas you have about what Johnston should have done had he stayed in command, he probably wouldn't have done them. If he had any intention of fighting a decisive defensive battle for Atlanta, the time to do it was weeks earlier when he had a terrain advantage. Part of the reason he got canned in the first place was because he chose to retreat to a less defensible position.
And even if he had, so what? People act like he could have just hung out in Atlanta indefinitely, and that the North would have grown restless and elected McClellan to end the war. First, he couldn't have stayed in Atlanta that long. When Hood attacked Sherman, it was to prevent Sherman from positions that were disadvantageous to the Confederacy. What you're suggesting is that Hood should have just let the Union take these positions unopposed. From this perspective, Hood's attacks, while costly in terms of manpower, allowed him to stay in Atlanta about a month longer than he otherwise could have. If the Union had taken the Macon railroad on their first shot at the end of July, they Confederates would have given up Atlanta a month earlier than they did in the historical timeline, not later. And even in the unlikely event that Johnston could have held Atlanta until November, and McClellan won the election, you still need to keep in mind that Lincoln was in office for another four months. There was no way that Atlanta was surviving the winter intact with that much of a Union advantage, and developments elsewhere, particularly Virginia, would have meant that by the time McClellan took office on March 4, the war would have been over anyway.
I say all this as someone who thinks that the Confederacy could have won the war, and who thinks that Jeff Davis and others made a lot of bad decisions. I don't think that Union victory was inevitable. But I'm reluctant to point to any specific tactic or strategy that the Confederates could have used to win the war.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
How old are you? When I was a kid in the 90s our soccer games were all on Sunday, and plenty of birthday parties were on Sunday.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Some of the images are obviously AI generated, particularly since AI has a problem with generating essentially the same person over and over again.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
It depends on your definition of one hit wonder. Technically speaking, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Thin Lizzy only had one hit, and I can recommend a lot from them, but that's probably not what you had in mind. Technically speaking, Del Amitri had two hits, and I was expecting you to post this song, which I heard quite a bit in stores when I was working an inventory job in college. I'm also assuming you aren't referring to someone like Bruce Cockburn, whose career lasted from 1970 to, as of this writing, 2023, the "main part" of which extends from the mid-70s to the late '90s. By "main part" I mean the part that shows up in Best Of compilations and that fans yell him to play at concerts. Cockburn is a personal favorite of mine but he happened to have one minor US hit in 1979 called "Wondering Where the Lions Are", which nobody remembers and that fans don't have any special affinity for. I mean, it's a great song, but it's not like his concerts are full of people unfamiliar with anything else from his catalog demanding to hear that one song.
ANYWAY, without further ado, here are my selections taken from the nebulous group of bands that everyone agrees are one hit wonders regardless of whether they adhere to any formal definition of the term:
Blind Melon: "No Rain" was their hit, and their debut album was very good, even if it seemed to be ripping off Jane's Addiction a bit. Their second album, Soup, is an unheralded near-masterpiece. Check out Galaxie.
Talk Talk: Best known for the Synth Pop song "It's My Life" (which became better-known after No Doubt covered it), from 1984. By the time of their next album in 1986 they had abandoned Synth Pop for an artier, more adult sound that was accessible but not exactly chart material. By 1988 they had completely abandoned commercial pretensions and were charting new territory, which in a few years would develop into post-rock but would never reach quite the same heights. They had another album in 1991 that wasn't as good but is still recommendable, and then the band broke up. Mark Hollis evidently felt that there was still more work to be done, and put out a solo album in 1998 which is very good but also beyond the comprehension of most listeners (though not inaccessible by any means). At this point he felt there was no more work to be done, as the album ends with several minutes of silence and he hasn't put out anything since. If you listen to the discography in order this makes perfect sense.
Rickie Lee Jones: Best known for the hit Chuck E's in Love, she's also in the Talk Talk boat in that most of her career is a lot artier than most people would guess. Then again, she dated Tom Waits for a while. Pirates is probably her best album.
The Looking Glass: "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" is the only thing anyone knows them for, and, like true one hit wonders, their career was rather brief. That being said, I was in a bar in their hometown in New Jersey years ago when Pitt still played Rutgers and one of the locals told me that everyone there knew that "From Stanton Station" was the better song, and it got a lot of play on the jukebox there.
Sixpence None the Richer: You probably know "Kiss Me", and you may know a couple covers that got decent airplay, but they had another minor hit with "Breathe Your Name", that expanded on Kiss Me's borrowing of dominant seventh chords from the parallel mixolydian to give it its distinctive sound. You won't hear that in a pop hit these days.
The Verve: "Bitter Sweet Symphony" was everywhere, but "The Drugs Don't Work" and "Lucky Man" were better songs for the waning days of Britpop.
The Cardigans: Continuing the theme of bands that had more success in their home countries than in the States, The Cardigans only broke through here with "Lovefool", but they had an entire career's worth of hits in Sweden. "Carnival" is representative of the sound, which is essentially a more pop-friendly version of Stereolab. The video is complete with conspicuous shots of Enoch Light and Free Design albums, which were very much an iykyk thing at the time.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
The US also recently announced that they can no longer support all-night operations in the strait and will be limiting support to predetermined windows.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Not only that; the Bahrain base was only in the news because of the possibility that it may never be rebuilt. The US effectively abandoned other bases in Qatar and the UAE at the same time the Bahrain base was evacuated, as the risk to men and equipment was too great to keep them functioning as operational centers. So while we theoretically have bases that could support sustained naval operations in the region, they are useless at the moment, and we're relying on other bases that are far away and out of range of Iranian attacks.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Others have admitted to inserting themselves as pseudo medical experts on the jury (the nurses of course). That is not proper during deliberation.
In a technical sense, no, but it's inevitable, and difficult to prevent. Either of us would make terrible jurors because our training and experience would mean that the jury would be looking to us for clarification and interpretation. If I say that the burden of proof isn't met it means more than if some rando says it, because it's presumed that I would know more about the burden of proof than the average bear. Suppose a case involves a trucking accident, and a prospective juror used to be a trucker. You can voir dire him all you want but unless he says something like he quit because trucking companies never follow safety protocols or that normies don't know how hard it is to drive a truck and if a passenger car got hit by one it's because they were probably doing something stupid, you're not getting the juror disqualified for cause. If he merely says something to the effect of some trucking companies don't care about safety and some truckers don't care about safety but some do, and he can't make a determination on the case until hearing the facts, then he's on the jury unless you use a peremptory, and you might not want to do that; the guy is a wild card, but you may need to save your challenges for ones who are obviously bad. So the guy gets on, and when it comes time to deliberate he's going to tell the jury what the standard of care is, that the plaintiff's/defendant's expert is full of shit, and the jury is going to give him more weight than the expert.
And I'm not going to blame the trucker for this. If he knows from 20 years of experience that you're never supposed to do something, I can't expect him to forget that and give my expert who says it's okay to do that sometimes as much credence as someone who knows nothing about trucking. And if I'm a juror who knows nothing about trucking then I'm going to give the guy in the room with me who has 20 years of trucking experience more credence than some expert who was bought and paid for.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
The base was effectively abandoned months ago; at present there is just a skeleton crew there. The evacuation was so fast that families stationed there had to leave their personal belongings, and there is currently no plan to retrieve their stuff. The question is whether the Navy will abandon the base permanently or eventually rebuild it.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
Rov_Scam
17d ago
They need to name a model "Black Hole" just before they start defaulting on their contracts and are unable to meet their financial obligations.
Rov_Scam
20d ago
As one of those people who, in your view, refuses to see the writing on the wall, I'm not sure why you would even be worried about my coming over to your side. Even if you could convince me and all the other AI skeptics out there, what, exactly, am I supposed to do with this information?
Rov_Scam
20d ago
Reminds me of a joke about the pope in a lifeboat with Raquel Welch (Those aren't buoys...)
Not as long as you keep the lights off and don't cross swords.
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