Whatever the risks of AI going rogue, it can’t be much worse than some of our drivers on the roads.
While the organisers are still struggling to get the National Dialogue up and running and everyone tuned in, perhaps we can talk about something that does actually affect everyone – road safety and road usage.
We fixate – and rightly so – on the way people drive on motorways, but we don’t have too much to say about our other roads, especially the hundreds of thousands of kilometres that link Gauteng’s towns and cities.
When we do speak it’s about broken lights, vagrants doubling as pointsmen and taxi drivers.
We don’t speak about the selfish drivers who jump the queue at a four-way stop (almost every other intersection in Johannesburg), the lazy who take the shortest way around traffic circles, the idiots who go even faster when it rains, the road hogs who are worse than taxi drivers haring to get the next fare when it comes to weaving across multiple lanes – yet still end up right next to you at the stop sign.
Then there are the self-important on their cellphones – even when their cars have Bluetooth – and the psychopaths who text with one hand. We need to have a serious chat too about blue light convoys.
No one other than the president, his deputy and Cabinet ministers should have them.
It will free up the police to do what they are supposed to do – protect us and uphold the law.
We should also make it a jailable offence for anyone else using blue or flashing white lights for their personal security details.
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Those are the things we should be talking about, but we don’t – and we won’t.
We don’t have a cohort of traffic cops fining speedsters and impounding unroadworthy vehicles, either.
Why don’t we lean into the problem and incentivise the traffic cops to enforce the law by giving them a commission on the tickets they issue, rather than a cool drink for looking the other way?
Why can’t the insurance companies penalise their clients who drive badly? Or should we leave it all up to Elon Musk and autonomous cars?
Whatever the risks of AI going rogue, it can’t be much worse than some of our drivers on the roads.
At least the machines will keep cars to the speed limit, maintain following distances and use their indicators, which is more than you can say for many drivers of exotic German marques.
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