Driverless cars

[zircon]

I recently discussed the topic of driverless cars with family and friends.

The basic statement was that most if not all accidents with cars was due to the human driver, a city with fully automated cars would prevent those accidents and save lives.

The counterarguments was as follows...
1: Trusting a computer is dangerous. Solution: Manual overrides for stopping the car.
2: What about off-road driving? Solution: Ability to control the car once outside the city and major roads.

3: Lazyness and waterfall examples of humans becoming blobs of fat. (Driving a car is apparently exercise)

4: It takes the fun out of it.

When i confronted my friends if their ability to have "fun" in front of the wheel was worth more than the lives lost it resulted in a simple 'Yes'.

I cannot understand that sort of mentality and when i press the issue others only get mad because they cant understand how "i dont understand" their position. At this point i usually backoff because i don't want it to turn ugly.

When you ask five people about a topic you will usually get five different answers or at least variations of the answer, this time however everyone reacts the exact same way and it perplexes me.

Does anyone have the insight to help me understand how they can reason this way?

[Knife]

No, but my take is this;

Since the internal gas combustion engines on it's way out but electric isn't there yet. I propose the following; electric cars with an electrified third rail highway system. Drive your electric car around town, going to Vegas too far for your plug in car? Simple, as you get onto the highway, an eclectic bush lowers onto the free way system transferring power from a federal power plant to your car, enabling you to travel as far as you want on a federal high way.

That's right, you and those larger semi tractor trailers you drive next to are propelled by power from the evil government. All mean to keep the economy going, but don't worry it's all nuclear.

Once you work that in, computer control on the free way is simple.


People have an unhealthy personality association with their car you'll have to break first.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I recently discussed the topic of driverless cars with family and friends.

The basic statement was that most if not all accidents with cars was due to the human driver, a city with fully automated cars would prevent those accidents and save lives.

The counterarguments was as follows...
1: Trusting a computer is dangerous. Solution: Manual overrides for stopping the car.

Once you have a computer system capable of reliably driving a car, it becomes dangerous to trust the people, as they would be the relatively careless and unpredictable ones on the road. The only control you should let them have is a manual brake and motor shut-off. At which point, you'd might as well automate buses and light rail, and ban most personal vehicles altogether. Which is the smart way to do it, because most automotive accidents happen simply because every asshole and his grandmother owns a personal vehicle.

2: What about off-road driving? Solution: Ability to control the car once outside the city and major roads.

Actual solution. Redesign urban development for greater efficiency, so the only place you see cars is on city streets. Outside, you'd take the train or bus. If you wanted to do off-road driving, you'd have to have a special-purpose vehicle for that.

3: Lazyness and waterfall examples of humans becoming blobs of fat. (Driving a car is apparently exercise)

Only an exercise in staying awake. The modern car has power steering and brakes, making it so even frail 90 year old ladies with 20/200 vision can drive them with little physical effort on their part.

4: It takes the fun out of it.

Solution: Make 'fun' vehicles special-purpose. Seriously, if you're going to transport people around in what amounts to a guided iron missile, you ought to be focusing on safety, not sport. The sport track is the place for a sports car, not the fucking public highways.

When i confronted my friends if their ability to have "fun" in front of the wheel was worth more than the lives lost it resulted in a simple 'Yes'.

This is a combination of selfishness and the usual "I don't care till it happens to me" attitude. And in some countries, such as the United States, driving a motor vehicle is seen as a God-given right. As such, anything which restricts it is seen as infringing on a 'right' with the knee-jerk reaction that comes with such thinking.

Unfortunately, one can state that reckless driving kills people, but the human brain just doesn't associate the same impact to hypothetical thought as it does to real experience. They're just statistics. They're not friends or family, or major medical trauma.

[Sikon]

Electric highways do have potential. An electric car might even go faster there with the comparatively large amount of power available (without quickly depleting batteries) and with the guiding of a rail helping safety.

Anyway, on the topic of automated transport:

For the foreseeable near-term future, we don't have driverless cars on regular roads since AI isn't good enough to reliably deal with all real-world situations, as opposed to brief experiments such as following the curve of a clear road under ideal conditions. The complexity is pretty high if controlling a vehicle able to move in any direction while handling everything, such as not hitting jaywalking pedestrians or reacting to the unexpected.

After all, the smartest AI of today has far less general intelligence than a literal human idiot, not an ideal driver. (Exactly how much is really needed for that would be an interesting question; insects mostly do alright but perhaps partially because they can survive occasional accidental collisions at their ordinarily low traveling velocities, as opposed to when they end up squashed on a windshield).

However, quite possibly automated transportation might first occur with vehicles traveling along rails, as typical for the guideways of personal rapid transport (PRT) and personal automated transport (PAT) proposals. Such makes the control issues relatively easy, with vehicles going forward along the rail and not turning except for choosing a different rail at junctions. It also gives the option of inexpensive, efficient vehicles aside from the cost of the infrastructure itself, not even needing large batteries if with electric motors running off the power of the rails. Keep pedestrians always off the rails, and AI requirements are very low. Such could allow unmanned delivery of everything from packages to some restaurant meals if desired, much more cheaply than today.

If designed appropriately, there might be little risk in "trusting a computer," like multiple redundant systems guaranteeing that a vehicle would brake if a stopped vehicle was in its path, although regular computerized traffic control could usually be very smooth anyway without the stop-and-go of human drivers uncoordinated with each other. Emergency manual overrides might exist too.

There would be little uncertainty by the time such was hypothetically starting to be implemented nationwide or worldwide, since statistics would by then be available from the first cities of early adoption, presumably showing that it enormously dropped accidental death rates.

When i confronted my friends if their ability to have "fun" in front of the wheel was worth more than the lives lost it resulted in a simple 'Yes'.

A suitably designed automated transportation system could be very worthwhile, but the appropriateness of the tradeoff is all a matter of relative quantitative amounts.

People make tradeoffs for fun or convenience versus safety all the time. Else we would have cars go around limited to 25 mph with giant bumpers. Such could be incapable of ever killing each other's occupants in a collision, but the problem is that would result in a substantially greater percentage of one's life spent just traveling, reducing quality of life in many ways.

The 40000+ car accident deaths per year in the U.S. are the single largest source of accidental deaths in modern society by far, the equivalent of ~ 200 days lost life expectancy for the average driver. Such kills on the order of 1% of the total population over their lifetimes, a percentage much higher for drunk or reckless drivers and lower for responsible drivers but with nobody totally safe from an accident not their fault.

Currently implemented alternatives often can be even worse overall. In many cities, trying to use a bus to get almost anywhere means looking up the route maps in advance, waiting up to 15-60 min for the next stop of a bus, which then takes a slow roundabout route, concluding with still more extra time spent walking the rest of the way from the closest drop-off point on the bus's route. For many, not using a car would mean spending a hour or more a day traveling. That's a huge portion of total waking minutes in a day, significantly reducing free time compared to having a car while feeling like less freedom without the flexibility. Every half-hour matters particularly for workers who may start with only several hours total free time not spent either at work, sleeping, or otherwise automatically consumed on most days. Walking and buses works fine for most college students on suitable campuses but not for everyone today.

However, a suitably designed automated transportation system might someday cause relatively little if any net loss of enjoyment, provide the convenience of faster travel times, and astronomically improve average safety. For example, it could differ from spending up to a half-hour or more waiting for buses by rather still having individual vehicles with no wait, a difference between public transport today versus PRT / PAT ideas.

Sitting in a vehicle may not seem particularly attractive if it was merely the same as a current car except for it driving itself. However, a system like the personal rapid transit vehicles previously described could mean that someone could sit back, surf the internet, watch a movie, catch up on some work, check their email, nap, or whatever they desired.

I mildly enjoy driving but not so much as to just go driving for a hour nowhere just for fun, and most people appear to be likewise. A pleasant enough environment to pass the time within with good recreation would usually make up for any loss of fun from driving itself, benefiting from no longer having to keep one's attention on the road.

Besides, no doubt there would still be some areas where people could drive regular vehicles, such as in rural locations, or even in future recreational car parks if people really wanted to drive for fun sometimes.

Being in a traffic jam in the middle of a city's rush-hour traffic isn't that fun, yet such is the kind of densely-populated and heavily-trafficked area where automation might have the best chance of paying for itself. To give an extreme illustration of a principle, if everybody was given a magical teleport ability, even most people who think they like driving would probably usually skip driving in a heartbeat if they could get to and from work faster.

Does anyone have the insight to help me understand how they can reason this way?

They assume the automated transportation system would be lousy (quite possibly rather incorrectly)?

As previously discussed, there's nothing wrong in itself with preferring some sacrifice of safety for fun and convenience, something we do all the time regardless to some degree.

However, one can make a strong argument for a good enough hypothetical automated transportation system having lesser tradeoffs than its benefits like up to 200 fewer days of average life expectancy loss from accidents. Besides, if such became popular, it would probably be less for safety reasons in itself than for other advantages like convenience and speed, without the stop-and-go of human driving dependent on stoplights for traffic control and susceptible to traffic jams in some areas.

After all, how often does anyone take a slow scenic route rather than the most direct route while driving? Sometimes people do so but usually not, for most people have better things to do than prefer extra driving time that much.

Getting it funded and working out all of the little details well enough would be the hard part, as with a lot of hypothetical proposals, but public reaction to an automated PRT system can be positive if people know the details, especially if it is initially just giving another option and not preventing driving cars, like this analogy:

From the traveller's point of view PRT sidesteps most of the disadvantages of taxis, buses and trains: it avoids traffic jams, preserves personal space and involves little or no waiting. [...]

And although they need tracks to run on, these too are lightweight, unobtrusive structures that are much cheaper than an urban light railway and can be installed overhead, above existing roads. [...]

The EDICT partners carried out detailed calculations to assess the costs and benefits of the five planned PRT projects. They also asked local people what they thought of the idea, using presentations, focus groups and, in the case of Cardiff, a visit to the ULTra test track. "Initially, many people were a bit suspicious of the idea, especially the question of personal safety in unstaffed stations and vehicles," says Ms. Fereday. "But once they knew the details, the response was very positive. We spoke to blind people and wheelchair users, and most of them thought ULTra would be easier to use than taxis or existing public transport."

All four of the PRT schemes studied in detail showed significant projected benefits and favourable economics. As well as cutting vehicle emissions and energy use, PRT can reduce traffic problems whilst making people more mobile, increasing the numbers of those using certain facilities and reducing social exclusion. The costs are reasonable, too. The Cardiff study, for instance, found that a PRT system would easily cover its operating costs and most of its capital costs. "When social costs and benefits are included, the rate of return looks very good," claims Ms. Fereday.

"EDICT was a detailed, rigorous study that has helped establish the viability of PRT in Europe," she continues. "With the help of public-private partnerships if need be, I hope we'll soon see the first operating PRT system. The only remaining barrier is political, really, and this has sent the politicians some positive messages."

From here

[Temjin]

3: Lazyness and waterfall examples of humans becoming blobs of fat. (Driving a car is apparently exercise)

Only an exercise in staying awake. The modern car has power steering and brakes, making it so even frail 90 year old ladies with 20/200 vision can drive them with little physical effort on their part.

Heh, I wish.

I have a sister that is so obese, she's on disability (well, I actually have two like that, but we're just focusing on one). When her car got taken away, she started to gain weight and had trouble even walking to her bathroom and back. See, when she was playing taxi all time for my other sister that lived with her and that sister's child, it gave her just enough exercise to keep her from getting worse.

And it was the actual act of driving itself that was doing this, since most of the time she opted to stay in the car while whoever she was driving went in and got what they wanted.

[Ender]

It increases the number of bars I can go to as I now don't have to be withing walking distance to stumble home from. Therefore I support it.

[PeZook]

Fun? Oh, it's so much fun to spend two hours stuck in a traffic jam while going "clutch, gear, accelerator, clutch, brake, repeat", or negotiating huge intersections full of impatient idiots or looking for a parking space...

...The fuck? It's an insane argument. City driving at any time expect night is an excercise in frustration. If it was fun, there would be no cases of road rage.

Damn, I could kill for a "traffic jam autopilot". It could be done today, too: all the computer needs to do is maintain distance from the next car in line. Incorporate annoying sound signals for things like approaching traffic lights (image recognition ahoy!), and have the system turn itself off if you touch the brakes...

Automated traffic would be great, too, but it would need the traffic management system to steer every vehicle, without exception to avoid idiots doing unpredictable things.

[haard]

'AI is not advanced enough' is a bullshit argument. One, we need to create a driving agent/expert system, not true AI. Two, the automated driver needs only to be better than a human on this very specific task to make it a net gain. Three, humans are terrible drivers.

Creating an automated driver that would be safer than a human driver is no rocket science. Reliable reference points along the roads coupled with 360 degrees sensors on the vehicle makes 'normal' driving trivial, and special situations (moose, blizzards, drunk moron) manageable.
The advantages is that a computer is not subject to boredom, habituation, stress, alcohol or any of the other main reasons for accidents.
Limit human-driven cars on main roads to 30km/h and you can park wherever you want.

The problem with driverless cars is that people won't accept putting a lethal instrument in public under the control of a computer, even if that computer is way safer than 95% of all human drivers. No, if it is a computer it must be 100% foolproof, EMP-safe and prescient!

[Sikon]

'AI is not advanced enough' is a bullshit argument. One, we need to create a driving agent/expert system, not true AI. Two, the automated driver needs only to be better than a human on this very specific task to make it a net gain. Three, humans are terrible drivers.

Creating an automated driver that would be safer than a human driver is no rocket science. Reliable reference points along the roads coupled with 360 degrees sensors on the vehicle makes 'normal' driving trivial, and special situations (moose, blizzards, drunk moron) manageable.
The advantages is that a computer is not subject to boredom, habituation, stress, alcohol or any of the other main reasons for accidents.
Limit human-driven cars on main roads to 30km/h and you can park wherever you want.

The problem with driverless cars is that people won't accept putting a lethal instrument in public under the control of a computer, even if that computer is way safer than 95% of all human drivers. No, if it is a computer it must be 100% foolproof, EMP-safe and prescient!

In last year's DARPA Grand Challenge (2007), some of the contenders promptly had accidents within minutes to hours, while the best went through a short road course at an average speed of under 15 mph. One froze at a traffic circle, another plowed into a house, etc. That occurred despite relatively ideal circumstances, with no poor weather conditions, with no people, small animals, or debris on the street. It's not a matter of driverless cars with current AI capabilities being safer than "95% of human drivers" but rather them not being remotely as safe yet, if unnecessarily attempting to have them handle the complexity of traveling on regular roads. Such is just like why there aren't janitorial robots everywhere yet or why there is not even any really good image recognition software on the internet so far.

Fortunately, as previously discussed, if a more general automated transportation system is considered, a solution avoiding any complex decision-making and steering is simply to have vehicles traveling along rails, elegantly making automation workable.

While the infrastructure would have some expense, it is not like hypothetical refitting of regular vehicles with expensive top-end AI units would be free either. Meanwhile, if implemented, such an automated personal rapid transit system avoids the disadvantages of current cars, rather being naturally electrically-powered and far more efficient. Once the infrastructure was set up, vehicles could be simpler and more inexpensive, also able to be less cramped and more comfortable inside.

[Broomstick]

Fun? Oh, it's so much fun to spend two hours stuck in a traffic jam while going "clutch, gear, accelerator, clutch, brake, repeat",

^ That right there is one reason automatic transmissions are so popular in the US. We have a lot of traffic jams. It's still frustrating, but there are fewer operations required per muttered outburst.

We probably could implement some sort of automated driving system, but there are several factors currently working against it. I will, of course, be approaching this from a US viewpoint, other countries may or may not be more receptive to the idea.

1) Infrastructure - an automated driving system (ADS) will require infrastructure which must be designed, built, installed, and maintained. Where does the money come from?

2) Cost of vehicle adaption - while brand new vehicles may have ADS installed at the factory there are hundreds of millions of older vehicles that don't. Upgrading will take time and cost money.

3) What happens when the system fails? We already have automated flight. A Category III instrument system on a passenger or cargo jet is already capable of flying an airplane from take-off to landing. Why do we still have human pilots? Because no system is failsafe. The human monitors the machinery and if the machinery fails he/she takes over.

4) This works best with high density populations - which aren't always healthy for humans. I keep seeing this meme of concentrating everyone (or virtually everyone) into very dense urban centers. Well, that may be efficient from an energy viewpoint, but it can be bad from a human one. Overcrowding causes problems from disease transmission to violence. Wealth ameliorates this - highly dense wealthy living areas don't seem as prone to violence and crime, perhaps because of the ability to purchase entertainment or just to get the hell away once in awhile. Poor and dense living is toxic - possibly because people are just STUCK in their situation and there is no way to put cooling-off distance between you and someone you're in conflict with. If saving lives on the roads indirectly results in more deaths due to violence or other crowding problems this may not be a bargain.

5) Psychological and cultural barriers - over identification with cars, personal vehicles, refusal to surrender control even to a superior agent, etc.

6) Not practical in all circumstances. Presumably, at a least a few people will have reason to be outside dense urban centers and laying infrastructure for ADS would probably not be practical to serve their needs. Not to mention the need to go places ADS hasn't been installed. We will still need human-driven vehicles and humans who can drive them. Obviously, commercial drivers' licenses would be needed, but I have no objection to people getting "recreational" drivers' licenses should they choose to do so. This would be comparable to the current US aviation system's "private pilot" where basically you just need the money and will to complete training to get your license. This will help with #5 to some degree, in that you aren't explicitly banning driving by private citizens but you ARE making them pay for the privilege. This will reduce the overall number of human drivers, but allow an outlet for the status-seekers and those with undersized penises requiring some form of compensation.

[zircon]

Thanks for the comments, it's interesting to read everyone's take on the subject.

When i confronted my friends if their ability to have "fun" in front of the wheel was worth more than the lives lost it resulted in a simple 'Yes'.

This is a combination of selfishness and the usual "I don't care till it happens to me" attitude. And in some countries, such as the United States, driving a motor vehicle is seen as a God-given right. As such, anything which restricts it is seen as infringing on a 'right' with the knee-jerk reaction that comes with such thinking.

Unfortunately, one can state that reckless driving kills people, but the human brain just doesn't associate the same impact to hypothetical thought as it does to real experience. They're just statistics. They're not friends or family, or major medical trauma.

This is what i find so perplexing because these people usually don't reason that way. They deadlock and raise the car to a position equivalent to the way a fundie holds religion.

[salm]

The Fraunhofer Institute developed something like this called the AutoTram. It´s basically a Bus that is controlled by a computer and can be manually overriden by the driver. It´s got cameras installed which recognize a certain type of white line on the street and drives according to it. It´s also got a whole bunch of other sensors to measure distance to other vehicles and obstacles and stuff like that.
The last thing i heard of it was that it was supposed to be publically tested in Tübingen but that was back in 2006, i think. Haven´t heard anything about it since then and can´t find anything about the test online. It might have been given up.

[TithonusSyndrome]

When i confronted my friends if their ability to have "fun" in front of the wheel was worth more than the lives lost it resulted in a simple 'Yes'.

That's because automobiles are considered an icon of "freedom" in our society, and as Hollywood has taught us, this brand of "freedom" is more valuable than anything else. If you want to restrict automobiles just to preserve a handful of lives that aren't taken on an hourly basis, then you're some kind of weak-willed pedant who bows to PC whims, because you don't uphold "FFFFFFFFFREEEEEEEEDOMMMMMM" in their minds.

The ability to design and manufacture vehicles that allow a consumer to go literally anywhere they please can possibly be considered one of the great overlooked failures of the free market. A responsible government ought to focus more on low-emission mass transit and not on giving toys to their populace that can't be sustained, just because they want it now Now NOW.

[BountyHunterSAx]

Tithonus - can you present numbers/evidence to back that claim? That cars are inherently unsustainable? Or more accurately, that commercially available private transportation that can take you 'across the country' in a matter of a few days is unsustainable? I'm not arguing you're wrong - I just don't have a clue and would rather have a clue if I ever use this argument with friends. If you'd rather just point me to a website, that's fine also.

-AHMAD

[salm]

This is what i find so perplexing because these people usually don't reason that way. They deadlock and raise the car to a position equivalent to the way a fundie holds religion.

Meh, i wouldn´t place too much weight on that. I think a lot of that is only tough guy, me-and-my-big-ass-car-freedom-blah-blah. If you gave people driverless cars equipped with internet access, Playstations, TVs and other stupid entertainment people would love it.

[Covenant]

Tithonus - can you present numbers/evidence to back that claim? That cars are inherently unsustainable? Or more accurately, that commercially available private transportation that can take you 'across the country' in a matter of a few days is unsustainable? I'm not arguing you're wrong - I just don't have a clue and would rather have a clue if I ever use this argument with friends. If you'd rather just point me to a website, that's fine also.

-AHMAD

Internal combustion engines are unsustainable, so by that definition so are the kind of cars people demand. Unless we have a truly astounding increase in battery storage capacity sometime soon an electric car will need many stops or some sort of on-the-go powering system, so it's no more a cross-country transportation system than a bus or a bicycle.

Furthermore, as populations expand less and less people are going to be able to effectively drive places that are already clogged because more and more people will become mobile, or at least have access to cars. This is a big problem. So there's really no way you can justify continuing to forever allow the dominance of the automobile. Fuel, space and human efficency concerns all lead to it being only a temporary solution. The Americans are going to feel the crunch slower than high-density populations, but the car just can't do this job forever. We are going to need more mass transit.

[haard]

In last year's DARPA Grand Challenge (2007), some of the contenders promptly had accidents within minutes to hours, while the best went through a short road course at an average speed of under 15 mph. One froze at a traffic circle, another plowed into a house, etc. That occurred despite relatively ideal circumstances, with no poor weather conditions, with no people, small animals, or debris on the street. It's not a matter of driverless cars with current AI capabilities being safer than "95% of human drivers" but rather them not being remotely as safe yet, if unnecessarily attempting to have them handle the complexity of traveling on regular roads. Such is just like why there aren't janitorial robots everywhere yet or why there is not even any really good image recognition software on the internet so far.

Yes, I followed the Grand Challange, but I see it in a different light. I look at the best results to see where the state of the art is today, and I see that it is somewhat good. I also view the existance of the challange as a indication that the industry does not feel that state of the art is close enough to invest in for real products - but then, I've worked in large corporations in a related field where the investment horizon for is two years. Still, none of those teams yield more than a fraction of the resources of a serious industrial R&D project.

I maintain the position that with a minimal supporting infrastucture - the reference points I mentioned above, and perhaps some wireless information ('this intersection has these rules') to make things easier - Toyota could create an autonomous car in a few years at most. However, I don't think they could get it cheap enough to sell, or even get it approved to drive on public roads. Except maybe in Japan...

[Broomstick]

Tithonus - can you present numbers/evidence to back that claim? That cars are inherently unsustainable? Or more accurately, that commercially available private transportation that can take you 'across the country' in a matter of a few days is unsustainable? I'm not arguing you're wrong - I just don't have a clue and would rather have a clue if I ever use this argument with friends. If you'd rather just point me to a website, that's fine also.

-AHMAD

Internal combustion engines are unsustainable

Bullshit.

Our problem is not the internal combustion engine but the sheer number of them. "Cars" - that is, automobiles, trucks, busses, etc. - have their uses and applications and short of a total collapse of society they are not going to disappear, nor are we going to return to oxcarts for those applications. I realize this fucks with fantasies of everyone riding mass transit but that's the facts. Much like people who want to do away with aviation - sorry, airplanes and helicopters are just too damn useful.

Yes, we need more mass transit. We need more sanely designed living spaces where bicycles and walking are realistic options. But we are NOT going to see all the autos go bye-bye.

[Samuel]

For starters, ambulances, police cars and other emergency vehicles are going to have to remain cars. If there is a problem that takes the grid out, you want the emergency responders to be able respond.

[Ryan Thunder]

Does anyone have the insight to help me understand how they can reason this way?

Simplest answer: They're selfish.

Really, I don't understand how folks can be against a comprehensive public transit system that removes the need for everybody to go plodding to work by themselves in a vehicle designed for 4-5 occupants.

I don't want a motherfucking car for any better purpose than to cart a potential girlfriend around in. That speaks volumes to me about its potential utility. Rather, the lack thereof, in case I wasn't clear enough.

Broomstick; I see that folks wish to make the process of this operation more painful than it needs to be. The EVIL GUBERMENT (TM) will just have to play them up as killing machines.

It might be effective to put counters up at well-frequented intersections. One would increment at approximately the rate that people are being killed in their cars for that day, the other at the rate that people are being killed using public transit.

We could even have cities make a pile of mannequins in a public square, and add a new mannequin every time an accident is recorded.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Ok, perhaps then I'm the only one here but I do actually enjoy driving. I can't really explain why, but I am rather fond of having (and keeping, thank you very much) control of my car. Compared to the usual 20 something's, I can't in good conscience call myself a reckless or careless driver. I haven't gotten a single ticket of any kind in the 6 years I've been driving. Ok, two parking tickets but I'm not counting those. I do though go to track days two to three times a year. So I can't really explain why I like driving. A part of that comes without a doubt from taking such a route to work and having a working shift where I can avoid pretty much most of all traffic jams around where I drive. I also admit that if all the driving you do is driving in the city (or sitting in jams) I can't blame you for not liking driving.

Sleepy and incoherent without a doubt...