The WSJ did a “special section” on innovations in transportation; and the largest piece was about autonomously driven vehicles and how that might play out in the (not so distant) future. I was sort of surprised at the slant/tone of the lead article, written by Dan Neil, the Journal’s “car guy”:
Who’s Behind the Wheel? Nobody / The driverless car is coming. And we all should be glad it is , excerpts (all emphasis mine; and any additions are in [square brackets]):
The cost of automobile accidents in the U.S. (measured in death, disability, health care and property loss) totals $300 billion annually, according to AAA estimates. The cost of traffic congestion (lost productivity, wasted petroleum, among other factors) AAA reckons at about $100 billion. Taken together, the costs of automotive death and delay equal 2.6% of GDP [plus many more negative externalities of automobile use; pollution, enforcement, etc, etc]. Our new robot chauffeurs can help…
The danger will come not from auto-piloted vehicles but from the holdouts, those drivers who for whatever reason rely on the faulty, flimsy wetware between their ears… Make no mistake: What’s in play is the emergence of a caste-based traffic system, one of robot-haves and have-nots, of steely-eyed electronic wheelmen vs. Uncle Ed with the bad knee. The dead-enders won’t give up easily. They’ll cling to their steering wheels. There will be friction. But it will all be over pretty quickly. Twenty-five years from now, piloting one’s own vehicle will seem weirdly anachronistic and unnecessary, like riding a mule to the mall…
My editors want me to address the potential dislocations between Man and Machine when cars begin to drive themselves. “The End of the Road,” and so on, the presumption being that with autonomous mobility and intelligent highway technology, something valuable, something defining will have been lost. Let’s call it: the American Romance with the Automobile, or the ARA. No American need be lectured about the ARA. Americans love cars and love driving, so the myth goes…. A century of mythmaking later, the ARA is still a creature of advertisers and still comprises imagery wildly at odds with everyday experience…. My point is that it’s all a massive, crushing lie. For the majority of Americans, the ARA has been repealed for some time. The automobile is an onerous, expensive obligation and necessity, and in the case of the working poor a brutal tax.
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