‘Every Right on Red Frays the Social Contract a Little Further’:
Felix Kent, Defector (gift link):
Just about everything we do to make driving a car easier instead seems to make people complacent. The lanes on roads are wider than they need to be to account for lateral imperfection, and then there are wide berms so that someone may drive completely off the road in relative safety. Cars that are enormous, heavy, hulking things do not allow drivers to feel their weight because of myriad assistance features that make it possible to steer with a single finger.
But driving is a skill. Like any skill, it is something people will have varying degrees of success learning. Some people simply cannot drive, whether on a temporary or permanent basis. We can bet the farm on autonomous vehicles which, though seemingly capable in warm and dry urban settings, are an expensive and individualized answer that exacerbates all the other problems of car dependency. It is also a risky bet as, like any technology, current performance is not indicative of future gains. Public transit, on the other hand, is a proven technology that, among other things, strengthens the social contract while giving everyone the ability to move around a city.
[Could possibly be mitigated in part by changing the training, but the social contract in the US has never been more frayed… so let’s fix that first.]
Source: Pixel Envy
turnings :: daniel berlinger 