Why would you NOT want to drive this?Posted on 03/24/2018 7:58:36 AM PDT by NOBO2012
Could there be anything less American than driverless cars? I suppose sexbots might quality but certainly driverless cars are right up there.
Seriously, driverless cars have no place in the land that practically invented the open road, hit-the-road-Jack-never-come-back motif. And Michael Walsh agrees:
…these vehicles are emasculating, imprisoning, anti-American, and inhuman. And now, in the wake of the first fatal accident involving an “autonomous vehicle,” they’re deadly as well.
Whence comes this rush to robot cars? Did the public demand it? Or have our betters in the tech industry and in the bowels of the bureaucracy taken it upon themselves to correct our lamentable human failings and, in the name of “safety,” shove these vehicles down our throats?
He also touches on how the fear of terrorism has led to the trashing of the Fourth Amendment. Citing how we’re all subject to government overreach, unreasonable search and seizure at airports and “legal” snooping via your computer, phone (and bank records) he wonders “why would you climb into a robocar and take yourself hostage on purpose?” And notes that convenience “is no reason to voluntarily surrender your personal autonomy to something that will, by definition, be subject to close governmental scrutiny and control.”
All of which seems self-evident to anyone of a certain age. Not so for Millennials – many of whom didn’t even want to learn how to drive – who have been conditioned by propaganda to embrace mass transportation, Ubers and Zipcars. Not only do they feel they are saving the planet by not owning their own means of transportation. And it allows them to forego yet another right of passage to adulthood: the assumption of responsibility for owning and operating a set of wheels to get them from where they are to where they think they want to go. They’ll never appreciate that joie de vivre kindled simply by listening to a “road song” written to celebrate freedom and mobility – both euphemistically and literally. Pity, really.
Here’s just a partial list of my best ‘Hit the Road’ songs, feel free to add your own:
The Beach Boys — ‘Little Deuce Coupe’
Ronnie and the Daytonas – Little GTO – aka the “The Wah Wah song”
The Stills-Young Band — ‘Long May You Run’
Janis Joplin — ‘Mercedes Benz’
Wilson Pickett — ‘Mustang Sally’
Willie Nelson — ‘On The Road Again’
The Doors – Riders on the Storm
Prince — ‘Little Red Corvette’
Tracy Chapman — ‘Fast Car’
Don Henley — ‘Boys of Summer’
And of course the ultimate Motown car song, Aretha Franklin’s Freeway of Love (in her Pink Cadillac)
Mr. Walsh concludes his analysis of driverless cars with this:
But that’s what the land of the free is rapidly becoming: a nation of passengers, without even enough gumption to be backseat drivers. Enjoy the ride.
They once said “as GM goes, so goes the nation.” I say “no” to gray, soul-less, driverless cars. I say let’s make Motown great again and see how it works out for the rest of the country.
So let’s hit the road, Jack (and Jackie).
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
I have that very same decked out Impala in my garage, but in original Cashmere Blue. It’s in the class of, “Clean Survivor”. It’s not frame off restoration, but has been taken care before I bought it in 2013, and I’ve done much more. I consider my Impala to have the best lines on any 1950’s design. It’s a piece of art.
Taking a girl on a date could be bery entertaining with a driverless car.
Just a warning to fathers and mothers.
I want a driverless motorcycle.
No one is going to take your little deuce coupe away from you when self driving becomes available. But it is going to mean freedom for a lot of people. And we are no longer going to have to take granny’s keys when she becomes a danger — just get her a car that doesn’t require her to be a road hazard every time she goes to bingo.
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Thanks for making a great point in contrast to the bitchy curmudgeons.
My brother and I talk about this all the time. I read that 50 percent would choose a robot doctor right now. Index fund investing involving computers means they do not have colds, fights with the wife, a late night binge to affect their performance.
Add to this, the young embrace any tech that comes along, it will come to humans will quit exposing their brains to any task as I see it. Sci fi, which I hate, is becoming all to real at the moment.
No more great and magnificent human achievement. No more Neil Armstrong, Charles Lindbergh, great musicians or performers, no more average Joe achievements. Just robots.
Bad To The Bone is the first song on one my thumb drives for my Impala. I have a photo on my FB page with my 58 Impala sitting next to the original 58 Plymouth Fury from the movie Christine. It’s beyond cool.
That’s a good one when cruising down the hwy.
Of course. But we KNOW we should avoid it. Not sure some of those intelligence markers are making it into these true automobiles.
There are far too many variables for driving a car. It is just too difficult to account for all the variables in AI with a moving object of decent size and speed.
For a train? OK. Basically stays on the tracks. But a car has too many degrees of freedom to cover it all with some robot.
Yes, with AUTOmobiles they can just make love to their mini-computers non-stop.
imagine being one of the outsiders..the non demon party and Christian...
you could not go anywhere except with govt approval.
I would also like to congratulate the author for the single best headline of the last 20 years. Outstanding.
I know what he means. They all look the same and that is a drab, boring teardrop-wedge look.
It’s not just drive. It’s looks. That is HUGE for me.
You might have a point with buses. Not sure though. Except maybe the degrees of freedom can be reduced by programming a specific route.
As for indie, it may be not worth it even if it was perfect. Might be too much of a pain to do all the stopping you want.
I still love my 02 Monte. Great looks, and fun to drive especially just dragging.
Never mind my big hunk 79 Town Car, which alas is rotting away and my husband doesn’t understand.
Just in case anyone buys the story that killing the pedestrian was “unavoidable,” even the far-left British “Guardian” disagrees:
Because the wussie-boys of today don't care about cars, unless they have all the hi-tech gadgets.
In the North. Cal Bay Area, we already have BART (Bay-Area-Rail-Transport). An electric train system, that operates, mostly without drivers. The human attendants are still needed, though, in case people get rowdy or sleep for the entire route and take up limited space.
I have been told that the BARTs don’t even touch the track while in motion. They somehow float above the rail during that period. Maybe that’s the dreaded Third Rail we are warned NEVER to touch.
I agree.
Autonomous Vehicles under your control are one thing. AVs under Gov’t Control are a totally different beast.
The latter are what we are most likely to get.
“Could there be anything less American than driverless cars?”
Democrats. “
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