Quote:
Originally Posted by madlex
Because cars don't need rails but can operate on public streets in a significantly saver way than today's traffic? Going forward the question won't be about self-driving cars on public streets but about people being allowed to operate vehicles on said public streets. But that's obviously something that's highly controversial and won't happen in the near future.
.... so, you think Americans will give up their automobiles and freedom to drive on the streets their taxes have paid for, by government fiat ? Seriously ?
You think that the incredibly high percentage of folks employed as drivers, the pretty well-established auto industry, the every-day Americans' exercise of their right to travel at will, etc are going the way of central transportation planning and restrictions ?
You envision future American public policy reflective of the early 1800s opposition to railroads:
“[Railroads will] only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.”
The Duke of Wellington, 1835
or more recently;
"The prolific English philosopher C. E. M. Joad could not bring himself to see real human motorists as anything less than mortal threats to all civilized refinement. In a 1927 book (whose subject was, significantly, the pernicious influence of everything American) he came straight to the point: “motoring is one of the most contemptible soul-destroying and devitalizing pursuits that the ill-fortune of misguided humanity has ever imposed upon its credulity.” The motorist was nothing but an obnoxious showoff: he “desires to advertise to the world at large that he has amassed enough money to hurl himself over its surface as often and as fast as it pleases him.”
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/467412.html
No, Lord Madlex, the driving of one's automobile is here to stay.
Last edited by Gzesh; 11-09-2017 at 07:33 PM.