So, let's stick to your point which, paraphrasing slightly, we have, "The cars are going to dictate how we drive. Those who don't follow the dictates will be limited in what they can do or punished."
So, on what I'll call your side for the moment, you'd like for the car not to tell you what to do. You'd like not to have any dictates. At this point I
think I might be putting words in your mouth, but you'd like not to have any driver monitoring. If Tesla is going to give the car FSD-like capabilities, then you'd get to use them the way
you'd like to use them, No Rules.
So, if you're a conscientious type who pays attention to your driving in any case, you'd be done with the nags and have this nifty tool to make your driving life more enjoyable. And if one believes Tesla's hype on safety, might actually be a safer drive; all that automatic stuff would help the car avoid out-of-control drivers and wayward deer.
Nice thought. And, if every single driver was conscientious, the population of drivers out there would
also be safer as a whole, and that'd be a win-win, with no nags.
There is, as I'm sure you all have spotted, a hole with this argument, above, that I'm putting into your mouth. And that's the bit where I stated, "If ever single driver was conscientious.."
That's pretty much a fallacy. Worse yet, it's one of those fallacies that even demonstrably bad drivers pull out in their own defense, because it's a natural human trait that any driver always thinks that they're better than all the
other drivers out there. (That is, everybody's worse than I am, etc.)
Now, One Of These Days, Tesla's going to come out with an autopilot worth the actual name and the nominal driver, with Tesla's and the NHTSA's blessings, can go to sleep until the driver gets to their destination. But Until That Day, there's two blinking obvious problems:
- The underlying car hardware has, at the moment, built-in faults in its ability to drive across the landscape without human intervention. Thus, the car needs to have human intervention from time to time for the drive to stay safe.
- There's an inexhaustible supply of idiots in the human population who will try to let the car drive at all times or in appropriate places where intervention is required.
As a result, right this minute, there are dead bodies lying around that, frankly, shouldn't be. And, at this time, with this collection of car hardware and software that
requires human intervention from time to time, Not Paying Attention is taking Deadly risks.
So what? What do we care if people do tryouts for the Darwin Awards? Personal responsibility, right?
Except that the idiots in cars aren't going to kill just themselves. It'll be their loved ones in those cars as well. And, worse yet, it'll be innocent third parties also on the roads that'll feel the effects of loss of life, dismembership, and all that. It's why there's severe penalties for drunk driving: It's not that the drunks die (which they don't always), but the people that the drunks kill. And, in the end, it's the rest of us who end up paying for this, be it with increased insurance rates, government disability payments (for life, sometimes) for those maimed and unable, as a result, to work, and so on.
That's a societal problem that the NHTSA, a government agency, created by our elected representatives, is chartered to do something about. They and Tesla have come to the conclusion that some form of a Nanny State, where a strong attempt to Make Drivers Pay Attention, is called for, and that's why NHTSA thing is a recall.
I guess one could argue that, say, in the 1950's, if the computers had been available to do that kind of driving monitoring been around, the NHTSA (or whatever was around at the time) might have mandated the use of said computers. But, since they weren't available then, they didn't get mandated.
Speaking along these lines, I believe I've heard recently that the NHTSA is calling for breathalyzers in new cars one of these days..
Yep.
So, it's coming. Welcome to the Nanny State, presumably with fewer dead bodies.
Now, one might argue that Tesla's
implementation of a driver monitoring system might be faulty.. but, seeing as I drive around the landscape with one and haven't had much trouble with it, at all, I think there's not much there.
So, I put up a straw man and knocked it down. Please tell me where I'm wrong in this.