The end of having to learn to drive a car


As someone who was born in the 20th Century, I learned to drive a car. Like most people that I know, I take great pride in my ability to operate this type of heavy machinery. Of course, it's really the only type of heavy machinery that most people learn to operate. I have used a lawn mower, but that's not really all that close. I have never driven a tractor, nor have I ever used a chain saw. Operating heavy machinery, you know, the kind that you shouldn't use if you're taking cold medication, was never was part of my life. And the future without the need for ordinary people to operate heavy machinery is finally on its way, with self-driving cars.

In case you never noticed it, ordinary people never got very good at operating heavy machinery. That is, cars. For the past 100 years, people have been killing each other with them. Yes, there are a handful of really good drivers, just like there are people who know how to use chain saws safely, but they're in the minority. Most people are just not that good at driving, even people who think that they are.

I will live to see the end of this strange requirement for ordinary people to handle heavy machinery. Getting a driver's license has been around for generations, so much so that most people never give it a second thought. It's as if when we turn 16, we are told that we have to operate a chain saw - except that it's a 2,000-pound one, and we have to memorize a complex array of rules and regulations, and take it out on the road with a bunch of other people who really don't know what to do, either.

Future generations will wonder what this nonsense was all about. Nowadays we take it for granted that everyone will have to learn to operate heavy machinery. Our lives seem to revolve around driving. Our identification is a driver's license. Everyone I know has been involved in some type of major collision with a car. Some people's lives have changed, some people have died. It's a cost that, in my lifetime, has always been accepted without thinking. But that is all about to change.

Ordinary people like me shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, even when we're not taking cold medication. And if the near future, it will just be another thing that people did in the past.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more