People should never text and drive. That’s the message from carmakers and governments, just like “drink responsibly” is the watchword of distillers, the fine print admonition you find in their ads near the image of the woman in a bikini scarfing cocktails at the volleyball net and inviting you to join the fun. Talk about mixed messages.
Of course people should never text and drive. Many of the suggestions offered in this debate have promise and merit. But while a lot of talk is devoted to stopping texting while driving, what’s really going on is that our automobiles and laws are changing to allow us to do just this: text while driving.
The self-driving features in today’s cars – lane-change warnings, adaptive cruise control and functions that permit the car to stop and steer for you, when you’ve failed to do one or both properly – are safety advances. But they’re also technologies that allow carmakers and technologists to bring everyone’s phone into the car even more openly as a participant in the experience, a facility they market enthusiastically, while offering – and appearing to offer – a variety of partial solutions to the hazards of distracted driving.
And the completely autonomous car is up next. The car in which you will be free to safely text, knit or read. Possibly even sleep.
Auto manufacturers and their suppliers have all come down on the side of autonomous cars, and the government regulators are in agreement. They cite efficiency, safety and other benefits, many of which will be real. But they will also be expensive.
Yet no vote has been taken, no national dialogue conducted where we discuss the course the industry is on. In coming years, America will be socializing the bill for a trillion-dollar-plus commitment to automating roads and cars. Not all, but much of the benefit will accrue to the private stakeholders who will make and program these cars, both traditional carmakers and new tech companies with interests in future vehicles, like Google and Apple.
Their business interest is obvious, but other companies are happy to see this day come, too. Americans spend billions of hours in their cars every day and this once-wasted time is being claimed by your carmaker, Internet provider and the makers of the apps you use. More time to market to you, more time for you to shop and, all the while, the data of what you do and where you go collected and monetized by someone who’s not you. To make it all happen, there will be pronouncements, laws and liability issues relitigated, or relegislated, in favor of industries. And there will be large piles of taxpayer money spent.
Would it be better spent on high-speed trains? Repairing highways, tunnels and bridges? Educating drivers better? We’ll never know, we’re too busy texting and driving.
Read the article in The New York Times
