Liberals Want Your Car Keys. Daniel Gelernter, National Review Online
Vella admits that weaning America off its “long-standing romance with its cars” will be a tough chore. But it is apparently a worthy task because Vella, like millions of other Americans, has been a victim of a human-driven-car accident. So he knows firsthand just how dangerous letting humans drive can be. His whining rhetoric is reminiscent of that of the anti-gun lobby, who similarly maintain that the only thing preventing us from saving lives is an irrational and outdated emotional attachment.
This is pat leftist thinking: “Individuals want X. Individuals are incapable of doing X efficiently by themselves. Therefore X should be provided for them by experts.” The experts are generally the government, often the academics, but never the individual. They know which doctor you should see, which operations your insurance should cover, which schools your kids should attend, and what the curricula should be.While the author does make a salient point, he buries the lede underneath an avalanche of current-right thinking.
In short, if progressives (not liberals) approve of it, then it's bad.
History has shown that this is not the case. And I don't think it's going to be the case with driverless cars.
In fact, getting off work and then sitting in a car on the ride home that I hailed with an app on my phone sounds pretty pleasant. If I can read the news, watch TV or write a blog post during that 45 minutes then I've reclaimed that productivity. That I'm less likely to get in a wreck in a driverless car seems pretty much a given. After all, it won't get tired, sick or, let's be honest, for some people drunk.
The problem that Mr. Gelernter has identified is not with the act of driving, but the progressive idea that we all need to be subject to rule by an appointed elite class. Matt Vella, who penned the article in Time magazine that Mr. Gelernter is referring to, cannot cope with the fact that people think differently than him. Because of this he has decided that everyone with a through running counter to this is a "contrarian" (which will-soon morph into the Nazi-inspired insult "deniers"). Vella's argument is not to be met head-on because you cannot change the mind of someone who is 100% sure they are correct to the point that they will not consider opposing arguments. Instead, Vella's position needs to be foisted on a pike in the public square an openly mocked.
But that doesn't mean that driverless cars are bad. In fact, that they have fairly wide early enthusiasm suggests to me that they are a good idea. They have the potential to reduce automotive collisions which can lead to financial and physical ruin, they potentially can remove a great stressor for many, and they are a potential solution to Billions of dollars being continually wasted on 19th century transit solutions.
Are their ethical concerns? Yes. Just as their are with any new technology, implementation will be key. But one fool's rambling in a magazine should not cause conservatives to pull the plug on technical advancement.
Conservatives should embrace driverless cars, but they should fight very hard at the government seeking to over regulate the automotive industry as a result of them. It is the overreach of the regulatory state that is the undoing of many good technological advancements. Fear, by the supposed elite, that they will not sufficiently understand knew technology to make it (with apologies to Asimov) clearly distinguishable from magic. If they can't fully understand it then their reasoning for regulating what you MUST do with it (namely, that they know better) vanishes in a puff of exhaust.
Unlike Mr. Gerlernter I'm not worried about the driverless car taking away my keys. What I am worried about is the elite, progressive class trying to take away my freedoms.
I'd like to keep those ALONG with driverless cars if you please.
