Goober, Think of the children.

Good day to be in the camera business.

When they mate the thing with a radar overlay let me know. That said I have driven some newer cars lately that have some of the worst driver view lines paired with the most ineffectual mirrors I have ever known. Deep dark caves seem to be the fad.

Johnny_Rotten wrote:

Goober, Think of the children. [...] I have driven some newer cars lately that have some of the worst driver view lines paired with the most ineffectual mirrors I have ever known. Deep dark caves seem to be the fad.

Ok, make sightless wideloads part of the vehicle inspection routine and force THEM to get the cameras, turn off their fucking phones and learn to drive without stuffing their fat fucking faces with fast food. Can't see what's in fucking front them, never mind behind. Three fucks, two sentences. Try to extract those images.

And know what? Fuck the children. I knew half a dozen never made it beyond kidhood - drowned, peddled under street cars, got spackled and drove off the high side, od'ed, you name it. Nothing would ever save them. This isn't a safety issue, it's total surveillance and hefty contracts. Unless you're a community agitator, our betters want cameras everywhere.

Hope all's well with you.

You can put all the video screens in the world you want into a car and people will still ignore them and run over fluffy.

Get used to the all seeing eye. Your bettors have determined that the surveillance business model works well for their profit models. Never mind its efficacy, that is just a minor PR expense budget line problem solved with putting on the "fear".

Just take a look at Britain, Half a billion and ticking  for the profit margins.

http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/ … 00iQ4ePW8B

An innovative design that one, from the days when we had to finally fess up that our vast American empire was crumbling.

Fortunately there were alternative upstarts to the American Experiment. Excellent rear visibility that one.



Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

And they didn't need to look like shite either.

Emmeran wrote:

phreddy wrote:

And they didn't need to look like shite either.

http://forums.aaca.org/attachments/f119 … cf1435.jpg

Nah, you're missing the point.  The Impala's trunk is so long that you wouldn't see a three year old running out to say good-bye.

Maybe so, but the drivers weren't tweaking either, so it balances out.  And kids were of a lighter color in those days.  Easier to see.

Last edited by phreddy (2012-02-28 19:01:22)

I heartily concur that most modern cars are either
a) Huge boxy SUVs with 99% limo tint and a rear window approximately 5 feet off of the ground.
b) Little roller skates with a rear window the size of a piece of paper, nicely bisected by a huge spoiler.
c) Minivans driven by women who aren't happy unless they are attempting to do at least 4 things at once, possibly including operating the vehicle.

Plus they are all so insulated these days that you couldn't hear the QE2 blowing it's horn in the next driveway.

How about we just have a 5 foot electrified lance emerge from the bumper every time it's put into reverse? That would teach kids to stay out from behind cars when they are backing up.

Look, even in the article the guy who is in charge of enacting this says it's a token gesture and wouldn't really change anything, but at least we will feel like we are "doing something".

Here is an even better solution. Ill give it to you for free:
You know those infrared detecting porch lights that turn on when they see you coming? Just wire that into the transmission and car computer so that the car just refuses to back up at all if it detects a heat source behind the car. Problem solved. You can just put it into reverse and hit the gas, confident that it won't back up unless nobody is there. Trust me...

Concur.

However, howabout we just keep an eye on our kids and not let them run around unsupervised at that tender young age?  As a CTO I agressively oppose attempts to replace individual responsibility with technological solutions.  (Obviously such solutions will inevitably fail resulting in big money lawsuits from self-centered and opportunistic individuals.)

Well stated JR. 

"Progress" being exponential we can now see massive changes to our lives that would have occurred over generations in the past, yet it's possible this type of thing has been happening for quite some time.

When we are able to increasingly modify our environment to our needs then our level of fitness needn't improve, genetically or culturally. This isn't the immediate problem, but our resources to continue to modify our environment are finite, and we have an exponential population increase. 

It's all going to go quite pear shaped. I'm actually pretty jazzed that I'm riding the crest of the wave, historically speaking.

sigmoid freud wrote:

In a decade or so 1 out of 5 humans will be living in abject poverty in an urban slum and you all go off over cameras on cars.

Sheesh.

Well right, but how do you propose to save them?  We're going to have close to 10% global population growth in 10 years.  Which portion of which generation would you have starve, and to what degree? 

No one seems interested in funding my research into weapons of mass contraception :(

All that aside, while I have no problems with back-up cameras in cars I do not feel it should be mandated by our Nanny.

Tall Paul wrote:

sigmoid freud wrote:

In a decade or so 1 out of 5 humans will be living in abject poverty in an urban slum and you all go off over cameras on cars.

Sheesh.

And have no fear, all those kids will grow up hard enough.

At which point they will eat our lunch, both figuratively and literally. Good times.

Paolo Bacigalupi is a fun read if you like thinking along these lines.