
Car turns driver in for hit-and-run - anigbrowl
http://www.wpbf.com/news/car-turns-driver-in-for-hitandrun/36755942
======
djsumdog
You know how to reduce drunk driving? Invest in public transportation.

Poor people won't be able to afford self driving cars for quite some time. The
US is a country where it's very difficult to live without a car, except in
certain major cities.

I'm not excusing this woman's behaviour. She lacks major responsibility. But
the world is full of irresponsible people, and building good public
infrastructure helps in so many ways that there's no excuse not to build it.

~~~
Zach_the_Lizard
>The US is a country where it's very difficult to live without a car, except
in certain major cities.

This is by design. As I mentioned in another comment, there was this 1950s
utopian ideal amongst American planners that we'd all own cars, we could live
tens of miles away from the city where we worked, modern planning would ensure
traffic was amazing, and we could avoid all that nasty density business and
all the 'others' that come with it.

No longer would white men have to live near black men. We could all just drive
away to the suburbs where restrictive covenants meant we couldn't even sell to
black people and restrictive zoning forcing large lot single family homes
would ensure that, even if we could legally sell to them, they wouldn't be
able to afford to live there anyways.

Racially motivated covenants can't be enforced any longer, but the land use
control mechanisms put in place to ensure no poor people move to the pristine
suburb still exist.

It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court upheld these laws, even sharing in
their legal opinions that apartments are evil and a drain on society, so of
course we should ban them.

If they had not upheld these laws, or these laws did not exist in the first
place, I'm sure the US would have maintained its public transit friendly
character to a great extent. Even LA had one of the largest, if not the
largest, rail systems in the world. Imagine that.

~~~
workitout
>> No longer would white men have to live near black men.

Today's youth think the suburbs was about race now? It was about a lot of
people don't actually like living in a concrete jungle, that was what it was
about.

~~~
Zach_the_Lizard
>Today's youth think the suburbs was about race now? It was about a lot of
people don't actually like living in a concrete jungle, that was what it was
about.

Race was a _huge_ motivator. Why else would we have racial covenants? Funny
how the growth of suburbs came at roughly the same time that schools started
integrating and integration accelerated suburban growth. We had Federal
suburban housing subsidies available almost exclusively for whites.

We have a name for this phenomenon: White Flight.

Pre-1950s we had racial covenants, but we didn't social engineer lifestyles in
suburbs to build them around cars. Streetcar suburbs for instance looked
similar to the cities they were connected to. Smaller and less dense, but
walkable urban places in their own right. Look at places like Del Ray,
Alexandria, Virginia for an example.

In cities themselves we tended to build highways in poor, mostly minority,
neighborhoods. The white neighborhoods wouldn't be leveled nearly as often.

~~~
theklub
I think you might be confusing crime and race although they happen to be tied
closely together. My family decided to moved out of the city when they were
followed home one day. Not sure race had anything to do with it but crime
definitely did.

~~~
wpietri
You are ignoring the key part of what he said. Why else would there be racial
covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians?

Sure, fear of crime was one of the mechanisms of white flight, but American
fear of crime has a big racial component to it. Historically, America has kept
black people poor, confined them to poor neighborhoods, and then blamed
blackness for the high crime rates that go with poverty and desperation.

This game continues today. Donald Trump recently tweeted something with
totally made up statistics blaming black people for murders of whites:

[http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-
abou...](http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks-
killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/)

It wasn't just wrong and it wasn't just racist. It was literally neo-nazi
propaganda.

~~~
thedavinci2000
I wonder if the guy is stupidly ignorant or willfully ignorant. He has said
some really despicable things.

~~~
DarkTree
The scary part is that he has gained a large following of people who think
he's just saying "what everyone's thinking". There are many, many people in
the U.S. who hear what he says, and then think, "Yeah! That's so true!" on
their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm
living in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum.

~~~
zo1
" _" Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any
background knowledge on the subject. I'm live in the U.S. and it's a scary
momentum._"

This happens on the other side of the fence, and no one bats an eye about it.
In fact, they call it democracy, or something like that.

Snarkiness aside, if these people agree with him, then that is their vote.
Really, we can't have democracy if we don't call it democracy when people vote
the way we don't like them to. It's the same as free-speech: we can't suddenly
abandon it if we don't like what's being said.

~~~
wpietri
Populism does have both right and left forms (and others besides), but that
doesn't mean that it isn't inimical to democracy. It is not hard to find
historical examples of populists who have used the vote to seize power.
Democracy is a lot more than voting, and it's certainly more than having one
last free vote for a populist who ends free voting.

There's also a particularly ugly history of populists stirring up racial
hatred as a means to power, which I think is especially dangerous.

------
Carrok
Best line of the article:

> It was later discovered that Bernstein had been involved in another accident
> prior to the one with Preston and was fleeing from that incident.

So this hit and run was just the result of fleeing from a different hit and
run.

> She said she had not been drinking and didn't know why her vehicle had
> called for help.

Mmmmmhmmm.

------
paulsutter
The emergency call was apparently triggered by the airbag deployment[1]. For
some cars, when the airbag deploys, a representative comes on the speakerphone
to ask if everyone is ok, and whether they should call the police or an
ambulance. It appears that the Ford system places the call automatically.

[1] [http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability-
report-2...](http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability-
report-2013-14/vehicle-response.html)

~~~
castell
Ford Sync uses the inbuilt GPS antenna and your phone (connected via
Bluetooth). Ford Sync calls the local emergency number and speak via an
offline text-to-speech (Nuance software). The feature can be turned on/off in
the on-board computer.

It's definitely better than the new EU regulation where every new car is
required to "phone home" the car position every few minutes, so that in the
case of an emergency they can locate you. Typical inversion of control for no
benefit (for the consumer).

~~~
detaro
> _It 's definitely better than the new EU regulation where every new car is
> required to "phone home" the car position every few minutes,_

[citation needed]

There is eCall, but it is "only" required to trigger on crash, exactly as the
system described in the article.

------
jusben1369
I was recently at a dealership looking at a new car. The sales rep was showing
me all of the phone and technology integration. He talked about how you could
see incoming call/texts/emails etc on the display. Then he got a bit cagey
about how you can enable and disable that feature. He looked at my slightly
perplexed (naive?) face and said "Sometimes men don't like to have this
information come up when driving with their wives" This sort of reminds me of
that story.

~~~
imissmyjuno
A truly male-specific problem ¬_¬

------
ableal
Featuring auto-playing video advertising from "a personal injury lawyer"
yakking, with hand in pocket, in front of "IF YOUR NOT HURT" slides ...

------
Shivetya
Well with self driving cars coming, will they be able to determine if they
should let you take control? The technology to monitor eye movement is there
and being able sense alcohol on your breath would not be that hard to pull off
just by it sampling.

Listened to the whole 911 and the patience of the operator was just great.

"Sorry Mr. Peters, I cannot allow you take control of the car at this time,
continued attempts to do so will result in total shutdown or notification of
the authorities"

~~~
DasIch
Getting an accurate enough sample from your breath without cooperation and
breathing into a tube is probably impossible. Even then there still is the
question of whether that sample is actually human breath from the driver.

Apart from that it's probably not a good idea to let someone drive who doesn't
have any recent-ish experience driving, especially in dangerous situations.

~~~
kawsper
In Denmark the have talked about an alcohol-lock, so you can only start the
car if you breathe into a tube. But that is probably easy to cheat if you want
to.

Oh, it seems like it already exists:
[http://alcolockusa.com/compliance/index.php?route=common/hom...](http://alcolockusa.com/compliance/index.php?route=common/home)

~~~
willvarfar
Here in Sweden, I don't know of any legislation but alochol locks are not
unheard of. They are fitted to a lot of company work vehicles, and are
increasingly popular in the cars of normal people who could never imagine
themeselves drink driving because insurers will give discount.

It was in my local paper that the local district nurses were having trouble
with them because they had to wash their hands in alcohol after each visit,
and this was enough to make the car lock up sometimes, leaving them stranded
waiting 30 minutes until they could try again and start the car and proceed to
their next house call.

------
4684499
Car's behaviors like this should be authorized by the owner.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
It was. She had to enable the feature so that it could use her phone's
bluetooth.

~~~
tantalor
Eh? I don't think it relies on your phone... the car has its own cell radio
for this very purpose.

~~~
halviti
Not in this case

[https://www.ford.com/technology/sync/](https://www.ford.com/technology/sync/)

You do have to connect your phone yourself, but it's unclear if the 911 assist
is on by default, or if there are any prompts the user must accept.

------
dang
Url changed from
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/12/03/a_florida...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/12/03/a_florida_woman_s_car_turned_her_in_for_a_hit_and_run.html),
which points to this.

~~~
thedogeye
I'm not sure I want my car turning snitch on me...

~~~
fixermark
It's a tradeoff. The system is designed to operate semi-autonomously so that
it can help you if you're not able to tell it what you need. That's a powerful
benefit.

In the end, increasingly many technologies are likely to act like this. I give
my wife the password to "find my phone" service so she can locate me if I go
missing on my commute or on a hiking trip; unless I execute more fine-grained
control than I care to, the same authorization lets her snoop and determine if
being late home from work correlates with my phone reporting I'm at a strip
joint. People will, ultimately, be responsible for choosing the level of
access they allow and for reasoning through the consequences.

------
bitJericho
Well the day I let my car make decisions for me is the day I walk, or have a
self driving car:)

~~~
aaronem
How does a self-driving car help there? It seems like that would make a lot
_more_ decisions for you than the more ordinary sort.

~~~
cjfont
The way I see it, either I make all the decisions as the driver of the
vehicle, or I'm no longer the driver.

~~~
LiquidFlux
To what degree? There's a wide spectrum of driving assists.

Traction control and ABS through to cruise control or the assisted steering
(terminology?) we're seeing more frequently today?

~~~
cjfont
Those are more along the lines of tools a driver uses for assistance. I draw
the line where if the car rear-ends another vehicle, a judge would never place
the responsibility on me (because I wasn't even behind the controls).

------
x5n1
if a self-driving car hit someone, and then called the cops on the driver. now
that would be something out of a good sci-fi novel.

~~~
gmt2027
And then pretended not to be a self driving car when the cops arrived.

~~~
DCoder
The short lived "Team Knight Rider" series had a somewhat similar moment - the
mechanic was working on the team's AI-equipped cars and talking to them, when
the cars stopped talking back. [1]

Mechanic: "Why won't you answer me?"

Terrorist appears next to him: "Because it's just a car, you freak."

[1]:
[https://youtu.be/xOv1-GiWSh0?t=7m15s](https://youtu.be/xOv1-GiWSh0?t=7m15s)

