Why Self Driving Cars Will Kill Thousands More People than They Save

All self or autonomous driving cars will fail at some point due to a well known and potentially fatal flaw. This flaw could be responsible for the death and injury of thousands of motorists every year.

Self driving cars are being touted as the path to a much safer future for automobile transportation.  In fact, Tesla and Google are pouring immense resources of time and money into being the first to offer an auto that drives itself. Unfortunately, both companies are pushing a technology well past its ability to deliver anything but a dangerous experiment, an experiment that may dazzle customers into show rooms and into buying a rolling technology that they think is safe and yet contains a hidden fatal flaw.

Every self driving car relies on immense computer power to make instant decisions about how to respond in any given situation, however, as we all know, computers and computer systems crash. When a pc crashes the result can be a loss of time or data. When your pc or phone crashes, you just turn it off and reboot. However, when the computer that runs your self driving car crashes, the result is far more serious. It is a well known fact,  even after decades of development, our phones, laptops and pc’s still, on occasion crash.  Entrusting thousands of lives to a technology that will fail at 70 mph is foolish.

Tesla, Google and any other car company pursuing this wasteful dream of self driving cars would be wise to invest their time and money elsewhere. Tesla would be well advised to instead, invest in better batteries for electric cars, batteries that deliver longer range yet do not catch on fire when pierced and yet are cost competitive. If they were to find a battery chemistry that delivered that kind of safety, range and affordability, that would truly deliver on the promise of a safer and cleaner future for all of us. (Image – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

How We Can Circumvent the Trump EPA

There are numerous media outlets reporting that the Trump administration has both silenced and taken away the ability of the EPA to perform or function. In essence the new President has simply shut down the agency until he can figure out what to do with it.

This kind of neck wrenching change of direction happens every time there is new leadership in Washington. Fortunately and unfortunately this is how our republic functions, it is the lifeblood that nourishes the very heart of our democracy.  However, there is another power broker that does not change every 2 or 4 years, this power broker is constant, relentless, incredibly powerful and can turn on a dime making or breaking both companies and economies.

This power broker is the free market economy, a bully pulpit that millions of us get to use to powerfully impact almost any area of our world. In the arena of energy, conservation and the environment, we as consumers can bend the will of any corporation and change entire markets despite what any politician may think or legislate.

Over the next four years, we as caretakers of our planet must legislate our own will to overcome any government laggards who would try to harm our cause. We the people have an entire economy to establish in a way that meets not just our needs but the needs of future generations and we must do this NOW.

So how does this work? Millions of us must vote our conscience in every single purchase we make. We must put our money where our hearts are and forge market share for those who treat our world as we would have it treated. just as important, we must set our minds to the task of making sure we stay away from purchasing products from those who do not share our concern for clean, safe renewable energy and products that do not harm our environment.

if millions of us do this, it will change our world so drastically the power of the old EPA will pale in comparison to the power of a new market based EPA in which Every Person is Accountable. A market driven movement so large no CEO or company would dare defy its principles of  environmental stewardship for fear of losing market share and being dumped by wall street.

This is already happening in many areas; the incredible rise of non GMO and organic foods, the amazing growth of solar and wind power, electric car companies like Tesla gaining record sales and market share despite plummeting fuel prices and the superb growth of the divest movement, which has seen large organizations and even entire countries move away from fossil fuel related investments.

We the people of this great nation must move forward and push our market based green agenda despite the negative legislation coming from the White House. We can do this, we must do this, the time is now.