[BongoBong]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Have you ever actually driven on a busy freeway? I for one would not look forward to the prospect of changing multiple lanes in a car whose velocity is not in my control.

You could probably liken it to running out of gas on the freeway. Which does happen and I don't think is that terrible a thing to happen.

As for why a wheel losing power will cause a car to swerve, its because the car is then pushed unequally one its two sides, creating a torque, a turning force. Think of rowing a boat and how rowboats turn by stopping the oar on one side.

I dont think a rowing boat stopping an oar on one side is that great of a comparison. First off the wheel isnt stopping or providing resistance on one side, it should still be rolling with minimal resistance. But also with a row boat turning is only determined by the forces exerted on whichever side. With a car, steering is done directly with the wheel, not by adjusting forces exerted per side. I would imagine that losing power to one wheel would likely push you to one side, but so long as you have your hands on the wheel i would think it would be easily compensated for (thats just a guess though)

And claiming that safety oriented agencies should outlaw something simply because it *might* cause problems is wrong. By that argument flying itself should be outlawed, since it poses a risk. Certainly, when a suspicion that something is dangerous arises, they should outlaw that thing temporarily. But then they should conduct investigations to determine whether there is an actual risk and how great the risk is.

The banning of something goes beyond is it safe or not though, the pro's and cons have to be weighed and see if the pro's outweigh the cons. Sure flying has minimal risk but the con of banning flying outweighs the minimal risks. Electronics may cause potential problems, but if banning them potentially saves one crash it likely outweighs the minimal con of people having to turn off devices for 10-15 minutes during takeoff and landing (or so I presume goes there thinking)

I refuse to buy the argument that it is impossible to determine this risk or that it is impossible to reduce it to tolerable levels.

I guess the question becomes what is a "tolerable" level when its potential human lives at stake compared to the inconvenience of turning off your electronics for a short period during takeoff/landing. Personally I would hope that tolerable level would be very very close to 0 when the only benifit is people get to use their electronics for a little while longer.