It’s worth noting that even in the Jetson’s future world of flying cars a driver was still required.
That’s because the Jetsons lived in a world where technology may have advanced but the fundamental elements of human nature remained the same. Which is to say most humans like to be in control. Driving gives us that sense, we can’t control the other idiots on the road but we can control how we maneuver around their stupidity. And that may be why we may actually be closer to the flying car
than the driverless car.
Warning: the images in your rearview mirror are likely not your biggest concern
This despite Elon Musk’s dream car doing its best to get you to leave the driving to Tesla. Which strikes me as even more insane than turning control of your house over to Alexa. While I sort of get why you’d like a computerized assistant to restock the toilet paper and coffee supply I cannot in a thousand years imagine why you’d turn your car controls over to a computer whose guts were built in China and will be, like your laptop, prone to failure at the most inopportune moment…
leaving you completely vulnerable.
Autopilot was active when a Tesla crashed into a truck, killing driver.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a 2018 Tesla Model 3, driven by 50-year-old Jeremy Banner, was in autopilot mode when it collided with a semi truck.
NTSB investigators said Banner turned on the autopilot feature about 10 seconds before the crash, and the autopilot did not execute any evasive maneuvers to avoid the collision.
The Tesla was traveling 68 miles per hour at the time of the crash, according to the NTSB.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said the tractor trailer pulled into the path of the Tesla, and the Tesla's roof was sheared off as it passed underneath the semi. Banner died at the scene.
But then, I’ve written about this before: Driverless Cars: The Pinnacle of Soul-Sucking Anti-American Wussification
Could there be anything less American than driverless cars? I suppose sexbots might quality but certainly driverless cars are right up there.
Why would you NOT want to drive this?
Seriously, driverless cars have no place in the land that practically invented the open road, hit-the-road-Jack-never-come-back motif.
Read the whole thing. It’s still fun. And that’s what cars once were: fun, fun, fun. Now you can take a 3 day cross country road trip and count on one hand the number of cars that are any color other than black, white, sliver or gray. Sad I tell you, just sad.
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