U give far to much credit to human drivers. Capable human drivers as a subset of human drivers. A large subset to be sure,but nowhere near everyone. At least an av cant get drunk.
If you had a system that drove roughly as well as I do at my 90% best and cut out the worst 10% of my driving, and let me not have to deal with the road that'd be fine for me.
And I probably should have said "sober, undistracted and competent human" since some people just shouldn't drive, and some people shouldn't be driving under certain conditions (which may not be tired or drunk, but going through a rough break up with late night emotional blowups).
People think they drive better when slightly drunk because they have impaired senses and do not notice potentially hazardous conditions that they luckily avoid.
Wow. You are giving waaaayyy to much credit to the responsiveness of humans. Roughly 1 in 4 drivers have a statistically significant amount of alcohol in their blood system. Lets also not forget distractions like cell phones, finding/selecting music, passengers, OTC and prescription drugs, et al.
From my perspective, I'm the only good driver on the road and everyone else needs to go back to driving school or have their license revoked. :)
So, driving while drunk is pretty dumb, but I wanna bring up the other elephant in your post that nobody ever seems to mention:
Drowsy driving.
Staying awake for 18 hours is the equivalent of a BAC of 0.05, roughly 2 drinks. That's waking up at 8 AM for work and driving home at a party at 2 AM, something that most of us have probably done. Staying awake for 24 hours is the equivalent of a BAC of 0.10, almost 5 drinks.
Perhaps because my friends all know that you shouldn't drive drunk, many more of them have crashed their cars due to falling asleep at the wheel than due to intoxication. It's just as dangerous, yet gets far less publicity.
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