“In a suburb of Houston, Texas on Saturday night, a Tesla Model S automobile was involved in a single-vehicle accident. The car smashed into a tree at a relatively high rate of speed, destroying the vehicle. The car’s two occupants did not survive the crash. Investigators at the scene quickly concluded that neither of them was in the driver’s seat at the time of the crash, so the vehicle had been driving itself.” (NY Post)

Yes, indeed, we can reduce accidents due to driver error to zero. We can eliminate drivers entirely and mandate self-driving cars. Then we can have only self-driving-car accidents. Only older persons recall the film “2001, A Space Odyssey.” Only they recall HAL-9000, the space ship computer. It concludes that the astronaut is a threat to the mission and tries to kill him. Only they recall being chilled as HAL explains, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” leaving the airlock closed and the man outside the ship to die.

It’s bad enough that we don’t teach young people our history. Now kids don’t even know what old films can teach them. Pessimists used to think we will kill ourselves with a nuclear war. Now they seem like optimists. Our mechanical servants will do the dirty work for us.

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