Hey, they still let us drive

The New York Post ^ | December 16, 2011 | Frank J. Fleming

[2ndDivisionVet]

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here.

After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all?

Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there, you’d get looks like you were Hitler proposing the Final Solution.

Even aside from pollution, the government wouldn’t allow the risks to safety.

“So you’re proposing that people speed around in tons of metal? You must mean only really smart, well-trained people?”

“No. Everyone. Even stupid people.”

“Won’t millions be killed?”

“Oh, no. Not that many. Just a little more than 40,000 a year.”

“And injuries?”

“Oh . . . millions.”

There’s no way that would get approved today.

Driving is basically a grandfathered freedom from back when people cared less about pollution and danger and valued progress and liberty over safety. They had different equations related to human life then: We could lose 10,000 men in a single battle in a war and call it a victory....

[central_va]

I can’t figure out why the R L Lee thread was pulled.

[re_nortex]

All that personal freedom, all that individual responsibility - no way. What freedoms and control of our own lives that we still have are holdovers from the time before the American nanny state took root.

AnotherUnixGeek: From yet another one in the world of such geekdom (Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux), even my choice of an operating system is a lesson in personal responsibility. The lack of "Are you sure?" prompting for actions at the command line is part of the appeal of working with complete freedom and all that implies.

rm *

It really does what I tell it to do without the need for an intrusive nanny cautioning me. Yes, I've had my share of "Oops" moments but I have learned from them...err, most of the time. :-)

[AnotherUnixGeek]

rm *

It really does what I tell it to do without the need for an intrusive nanny cautioning me.

Yeah, I remember learning the power of rm -r during my first internship, shortly followed by the wonders of tar -xvf as I worked desperately to restore the lost directories from backup before my manager got back from lunch =).

[LearsFool]

May your chains rest lightly...

When Sam Adams said that, Americans were capable of governing themselves and, collectively, their communities. If it hasn't yet dawned on you that that's no longer the case, you should look around more. (Or just read Free Republic - there are plenty of folks on here who would pervert liberty into license every chance they get.)

Since you like quotes, here's one for you:

He who will not rule himself will be ruled by another.

[LearsFool]

Next, they will not allow us to speak to each other in the car

Statistically, conversing with an adult passenger reduces the chance of accident by 30%. Conversing on a cell-phone, by contrast, quadruples your chance of accident.

And how about this eye-opener:

Epidemiological evidence suggests that the relative risk of being in a traffic accident while using a cell phone is similar to the hazard associated with driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit.

[newzjunkey]

I think this is mistake. Prior stories indicated “hands-free” devices were not part of the proposed ban.

[editor-surveyor]

>> I think this is mistake. Prior stories indicated “hands-free” devices were not part of the proposed ban. <<

.
You are mistaken.

The “hands free” devices have been shown to be more distracting than the hand held ones when driving. Its not the physical activity of holding a phone, but the mental distraction that is the problem.

[editor-surveyor]

You forgot the “chimney Police.”

[rockrr]

Yea, I do like quotes.

Here’s one back at ya...

“They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1759

[CORedneck]

I have done Unix sysdamin for many, many years and one thing I did when I needed to do the “rm” command is I would do a “ls” on the path to see what I going to irrevocably remove before dong and “rm” command. Thanks to “bash” shell, I could go back to the “ls” command and then backspace and replace “ls” with “rm”.

The parent thread mentioned about operating systems, I have used many different one’s over the years. I want to add in OpenBSD, NetBSD, Windows/DOS and Mac OS X which also uses a BSD baseline kernel.

> Yeah, I remember learning the power of rm -r

[LearsFool]

That’s a good one. Now we see 21st-century America in a clear light. Cell-phoning drivers are merely a dripping sore, indicating the body is rotten through with cancer. It’s a sad situation.