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 anyway 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.
We’re talking foolhardy people who eventually sent men
to the moon strapped to a giant rocket that had less computational power than
it takes to calculate the trajectory of an Angry Bird. Their kids dangled from
jungle gyms over pavement.
Face it: We’re just not those people anymore. We don’t
do dangerous things where lots of people could be hurt . . . even if they’re
really cool and fun ideas. You can say we value human life more now, but it’s
probably more apt to say we’re much sissier.
That’s why we have to be careful with driving, as it’s
one of the last really dangerous freedoms we have. Anyone with a car can decide
to head out the door and drive cross-country. That’s an extreme freedom our
ancestors couldn’t even imagine, and don’t bet it will last.
So just put the cellphone down, place your hands at 10
and 2 and drive as carefully as you can: We don’t want to give government
regulators any more ideas about banning driving.
A complete ban may not seem feasible, but if engineers
ever make self-driving cars viable, the government could make them mandatory so
that the average man will never touch a steering wheel again. Your only option
will be public transportation or begging a robot to give you a ride.
We’d like to think of the future as having even more
freedom — flying cars and personal rocket ships to take us to space — but the
future is more likely going to have us standing around waiting for someone else
to drive us where we want to go . . . probably with government-mandated mittens
pinned to our jackets.
We’ll be a much safer people, at least until another
country decides to steal our lunch money.
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