Better Living Through Chemicals and Technology: Better Mistakes Tomorrow!

I thought I had it all figured out: self-driving cars are being developed to enable the entire population to be stoned and still arrive at their jobs, assuming they have a job, safely.

Honey, I’m home!

In the interim, a fierce PR campaign has been conducted via the media echo chamber to ensure everyone that legal pot is having absolutely no negative effect on vehicular accidents in order to continue our progressive march towards the Brave New World.

“Public safety doesn’t decrease with increased access to marijuana, rather it improves,” Benjamin Hansen, one of the authors of the previous study, said in an email. Hansen, an economics professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene, was not involved in the current study.

I’m fairly sure Professor Hansen also believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win in 2016.

Naturally, nobody knows how to interpret the unexpected results of their studies, so they speculate instead:

The authors of both studies suggest that marijuana users might be more aware of their impairment as a result of the drug than drinkers. It’s also possible, they say, that patients with access to medical marijuana have substituted weed at home for booze in bars and have stayed off the roads.

According to Highway Patrol officers in California, where they just ended pot prohibition, that is unfortunately, and obviously, not true:

"You can look at the states that have legalized it and they've seen an uptick in collisions and fatal collisions, so it's definitely a concern for us," said CHP Officer Jonathan Sloat.

Despite that evidence, a new poll shows just 40 percent of Americans believe pot contributes to more crashes. Officer Sloat said public perception has to change because the effects of marijuana are obvious. "What we see behind the wheel is the same thing we see with alcohol. We see an inability to maintain your lane, maintain a consistent speed. Slow reaction time."

Anyway, now I see that all of this is irrelevant as self-driving cars are really not the future after all, but rather computer-assisted systems that tap right into the driver’s brain to “read your mind.” They enable the vehicle systems to react sooner than you can yourself.

The world’s biggest carmakers and technology companies are spending billions of dollars to perfect your ability to drive without thinking. Nissan Motor Co. is taking a different direction -- trying to “decode” your thinking so hands-on driving is more fun.

Driver wearing Nissan’s “brain- to-vehicle” bucket

Nissan thinks that manual driving might still be of value to society in the future, saying “driving pleasure is something as humans we should not lose.” I don’t disagree, but somebody better put their thinking hat on because if we’re going to give drivers wired skull caps to read their brains and implement their planned actions faster it would be good idea to ensure there is still something left to read.

And we’ve already got covfefe if they just want to improve people’s reaction time, If we can’t improve the overall quality of the mistakes, I say let it wait till tomorrow.

Linked By: BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!