I found this disturbing:

Connected car meets health, retail & home

"To discuss the vast opportunities that connected industries offer automakers, we recorded a video interview with the Vehicle Design and Infotronics Manager, R&A at Ford where he shares their latest thinking on what type of companies to collaborate with.

I would like to share the recording with you here - //bit.ly/1xYzLJT

The video lends a particular focus to health monitoring tech within the car. "

• • Find out which types of connected health, home, retail organizations automakers are considering partnering with so that you can plot future mergers and acquisitions

• • Discover how connected health features (e.g. monitoring a driver's blood sugar levels) can aid automakers in attracting new users by offering new value added services

OUCH!!!

Speaking of stupic distracted drivers, this was forwarded to me today.

//jalopnik.com/horror-crash-shows-why-you-never-ever-pass-a-truck-bef-1646587964

BINI Busses are the future.                                                Mini Estate

From the article:
"...Here’s what I think will happen next: the initial use of drive-anywhere autonomous cars (I call them AutoCars) will be with companies like Uber or Lyft rather than individually owned. They will rapidly gain acceptance because they’ll save people time (imagine all you could do with that time currently spent behind the wheel), will lower the costs of getting from one place to another, and will be way faster while also being safer than human driving..."

This is all well and good until something happens that's outside the parameters built into the collision avoidence software.... At that point, you're just along for the ride. But, at least you can keep up with Facebook. [rolleyes]

Subaru has come up with their "Eyesight" system that will slow you down or even stop the car if it detects you're too close to something up front.
Great, all we need are people depending on this crap and paying even less attention....

Suits me. Get the texters into the robot traffic lanes and leave the driving lanes for folks who know how. 

 "Driving" in the USA has already eroded past the point of no return.  Automatics and CVT geared sport-futilities have won.  The market demands traction / spin & launch controls and just about everything else be imbedded in-between the occupant behind with the wheel and the car itself.  Even modern supercars are two pedaled...an overweight mix of metaphors that blend insane performance and idiot proofing.  Might as well steer the masses to autonomous droid runabouts (google glass ready of course) and get them off any back roads that are left.  As gag inducing as it is, the Times article is right.  Driving will be for recreation.

Not that any of us still subscribe to TIME, but just to make sure you don't:

//time.com/3517110/end-human-driving/

Here in silicon valley there are a disturbing number of these nutjobs trying to impose their Soylent Green initiatives.  This may actually become a thing in California so prepare to do battle.

As pretty as the coast is, those living on it collect mental disorders like flies.