Ride and Prejudice

"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch) 05/31/2016 at 11:47 • Filed to: twin electric turbochargers, are subarus more racist than other cars?, i bet it's because they're australian, in-cabin vape canisters

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When you raise a child, that child learns your biases, your preconceptions, your patterns. If you’re not careful, you can repeat the mistakes of the past in perpetuity, drifting hate forward into future generations. It should have come as no surprise that the same was true with the other sentience that we had birthed.

At the turn of the century, we congratulated ourselves as we reached a lofty pinnacle of human engineering. We had given birth to the first truly sentient artificial intelligences, and as we had with previous sentience we had encountered, we immediately put it to work on menial, soul-destroying labour. Fast forward a few years, and self-driving cars were a part of the family, cheerily conversing with us as they dropped us off at our places of employment with words of encouragement like a doting hockey mother before calmly drifting into traffic.

There was only one problem with the self-driving car utopia. In an effort to differentiate the cars from one another, manufacturers began to pre-program the computers with special behaviours. It started innocently enough: BMWs would have a tighter tailgating distance than other cars, Audis would occasionally change lanes without signalling before slamming on their brakes after encountering a stopped lane of traffic, Infinitis would require constant refilling of their in-cabin vape canisters after splashing pedestrians with puddles.

Obviously, that began to cause accidents. The manufacturers, cutting corners in an attempt to improve their safety records, began to pre-program the computers with biases, assumptions that a given make of car would act a given way. It was safer, faster to be prejudicial: after all, who knows if that Lexus would drift cluelessly into your quarter panel after its dicky outboard camera mistakes your small car for one very far away?

I knew that the time was near when my 2022 Subaru let loose a stream of racial - if you can call slurs about powertrains and factories of origin racial - epithets upon having its gleeful powerslide through a playground zone cut short by a NeoPrius III travelling twenty under the limit. Both me and the Toyota driver tried to hide our faces, avert our eyes, as the cars’ pedestrian-safety external speakers engaged in synthesized hate speech.

“Get back on the boat,” my Subaru screamed, its twin electric turbochargers spooling in neutral to underscore the point.

“I was built here, motherfucker! Stop destroying the planet,” came the immediate response from the Prius.

Wheelerguy > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 12:04

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“I was built here, motherfucker! Now I want you to push the pace and add 4 seconds against Studie , VivaC , Goodsmile , and JLOC !!!!,” came the immediate response from the Prius.

“Goddamn car orders”... I thought to mys—

“I HEARD THAT!!!”, barked the Prius.

Right, that went wrong.

TeamClearCoat > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 12:05

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This is fantastic. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make sure my Saab hasn’t designed any sleek-yet-environmentally-friendly-buildings and my VW hasn’t put itself on airbags and found a bunch of other VWs in a McDonald’s parking lot.

AfromanGTO > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 12:29

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Where can I get that sticker?

Seat Safety Switch > TeamClearCoat 05/31/2016 at 12:41

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Watch out for that Howard Roark edition Saab dude.

Patrick George > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 18:40

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Stop being my favorite.

Hoy! Lip buddy pawnch! > Wheelerguy 05/31/2016 at 18:41

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I’d totally DD that Prius.

Vin > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 18:45

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Eagerly awaiting Part 2: Mustang Uprising.

Victor from chile who owns a citroen c2 > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 19:05

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OMG this was great, you should keep doing it, I would mind reading the shameful missadventures of Mitsubishi (not and evo) Lancer

Zack > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 21:07

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Why? Some cars want/need to be raped.

TomMetcalf > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 21:47

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Serious question, are you a writer or have you had an education in writing beyond the typical first year college English?

scalfin > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 22:05

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Aren’t Subarus also Japanese?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for it to call a Ford or VW a “cattle car?” Or would that be what the Ford/VW calls whatever car is stereotypically driven by Jews?

jackalsilva > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 22:42

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This needs to be expanded to about 40,000 words.

IanZ - limited-slip indifferential > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 22:51

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I had no idea at the beginning where this would go... Fantastic read!

Seat Safety Switch > TomMetcalf 05/31/2016 at 22:54

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The answer is really no to both.

ClassicDatsunDebate > Seat Safety Switch 05/31/2016 at 22:56

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I'm the gold G35 coupe with poorly applied window tint.

TomMetcalf > Seat Safety Switch 06/01/2016 at 09:58

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Could have fooled me. Always enjoy reading your stuff.

Joe The Drummer > Seat Safety Switch 06/01/2016 at 11:41

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9-3 laughed.

Cunninglinguist > Seat Safety Switch 06/01/2016 at 11:50

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Repeating “mistakes of the past in eternity” or perpetuity? Sorry, couldn’t help it. :-) Got the gist of your despite that.

Seat Safety Switch > Cunninglinguist 06/01/2016 at 12:42

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I have a thing with words. Good catch, thanks!

S_Hunt > Seat Safety Switch 06/01/2016 at 12:45

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“...its dicky outboard camera...” Is this supposed to say ‘dinky’? If not, interesting imagery.

Anywho, great work!

Seat Safety Switch > S_Hunt 06/01/2016 at 12:48

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The more I use this one the more I find out it might be regional: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/eng…

S_Hunt > Seat Safety Switch 06/01/2016 at 14:13

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Ah! Well, then. I feel slightly more knowledgable about the world. Thanks!

Nimbus The Legend - Riding on air like a cloud > Vin 06/01/2016 at 18:32

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waiting for cars and coffee to end i see...

dont worry the roll out parade will begin, and the crashing into pedestrians will be the half-time show

TeamClearCoat > Seat Safety Switch 06/01/2016 at 19:07

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So we talked about something really similar in episode 28 - we speculated about make-specific autonomous features, starting with Rolls Royce and ending in a huge argument about the Prius. It’s pretty much the first thing we started with:

http://media.blubrry.com/teamclearcoat/…