The
automobile has a long and storied history in America. Indeed, it is now hard to
separate one from the other. The Founders brilliant and eloquent ideas, values,
documents and oration became the framework of a new and unparalleled nation,
dedicated to individual freedom and natural rights protected by the rule of law.
A dozen decades distant, the automobile unwittingly took up the same role as
champion of individual autonomy and independence.
For the
first time in history, people could easily and quickly traverse vast stretches
of land. One could find fruitful labor far from home, explore new “worlds,”
take the family to a resort or to visit distant relatives. American’s wanderlust
and inquisitiveness was such that various road-side attractions sprang up all
over the country. Many national parks came into being around this time, most
located in the expansive western states.
People from all over the country roamed far and wide to take it all in. The
“road trip” became a cherished American tradition. America’s citizens fell in
love with their new-found ability to not only be free, but to freely and quickly move around the country whenever
and wherever they wanted to go.
They were
literally in “the driver’s seat,” independent, confident and in control of
their bodies and their lives.
Many in the
interior of the country, in the Heartland, the hinterlands, the breadbasket,
drive tractors around all day that they may feed the world, yet when the work
is done they may take their Mustangs, El Dorados, Suburbans and Camaros and
cruise off to parts unknown, unlike the frail, coastal elites who need to be
chauffeured around by others…via a taxi, limo, bus or subway system. (And public transit is to individual
transportation as school food is to Haute Cuisine).
And now
comes the advent of the “driver-less vehicle.” These are being touted in the
mainstream media as a positive breakthrough for the human race. Why?
Because,
they say, people won’t need to own
them. They can be “ordered” only when they are needed, indeed will be shared among us resulting in fewer
vehicles needed and less congestion…a'la public transit! There will be no need
for parking ramps, parking lots, garages or carports the experts claim. On any
given thoroughfare, they breathlessly posit, only one lane will be needed in
each direction, because of the “efficiencies” these driver-less vehicles will
bring with them. This, in turn, will
allow for more and/or wider lanes for pedestrians and bikers, and more buffer
or green space for natural vegetation, flowers, etc.
I
should have guessed where this was heading.
Moreover,
they state, self-driving vehicles will therefore enable better carpooling, less idling in
traffic and smarter route planning, thereby making it easier to live in dense
cities, rendering urban living more attractive!
Of course.
Additionally,
experts lecture, computer-driven vehicles won’t waste gas and time getting lost,
gawking at roadside attractions, or looking for parking spots, therefore total
miles traveled and greenhouse gases will decline. Hooray!
But
what does a driver-less vehicle do, say, when it has to “decide” whether to hit
another vehicle or a human being in an unplanned, emergency situation?
When we
don’t drive anymore, and we let machines do it for us, because we hope they are
better at it, they make fewer mistakes, they don’t have emotion tied up in it,
etc., etc., we are saying: we are too dumb, undisciplined, weak and error-prone
to take responsibility for our own inventions, actions…and locomotion. One
recent online article explained that, of the approximately 30,000 traffic
fatalities in the U.S. each year, as many as 90 percent of them are
attributable to human error. Take the
human out of the equation, it stated,
and fatalities would plummet.
Yes,
and if there were no humans, fatalities would be impossible.
The
big-government “progressives” always
want to take the individual human and
his or her free will out of the equation, thereby, they believe,
rendering the God that granted that free will moot… and turning the now
intellectually and morally circumcised pseudo-person towards the all-mighty… state.
For far too long, we in the
West, who should know better, have relinquished control of our lives to Big
Government. Now we are willingly
ceding what’s left of our autonomy to artificial intelligence and robotic
machinery, duly relegating ourselves to the passenger seat of life.
No
robot, autonomous vehicle, or artificially intelligent machine will ever be
able to replace the heart, soul, courage, humor, wit, empathy and oratorical
skill of, say, a Churchill or a Reagan, historic defenders of our freedom and autonomy. If we listen closely to history, we can
hear them imploring us not to surrender… to the techno-tyrannical age. They believed in using technology to aid and abet and protect our freedom, not in letting it- or any government program or edict- restrict or abuse it.
Driver-less
cars?
Soulless
nation.
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