Better Than Parenting

Rather than use cars to parent drivers, why not encourage drivers to learn how to drive competently – so that they are not in need of parenting?

Of course, we have the reverse. Have had it – for decades – and it shows. All you have to do to see it is go for a drive. It is almost as common as seeing “masked” people was a couple of years ago to see people wandering all over the road – Lane Keep Assistance “technology” notwithstanding. To find yourself behind someone who drives below the speed limit – then speeds up and drives faster than the limit – alternating between the two at random.

Who needs a prod – from “assistance technology” to notice the “car ahead is pulling away” because the light has turned green.

Yes, really.

How about the driver who practically comes to a complete stop in the travel lane before turning off the travel lane – forcing you to come to a near-stop? Good thing there’s Automatic Emergency Braking “technology.”

The correlation between worsening driving behavior and the increasing parenting of drivers seems clear (more in support of that contention follows below). Probably because it stands to reason. The less that is expected of people, the less you get from most people.

Ask any employer. Ask any teacher.

A kid who isn’t challenged is often a kid who never learns. Imagine teaching a kid – so to speak – to rely on chat GTP to compose an essay. Or handed a calculator to obtain the results of 2+2. Such a kid will forever be dependent upon his calculator for even the simplest addition – and unable to compose a coherent, grammatically correct sentence on his own. To cripple a kid in this way could very fairly be characterized as child abuse.

Is it really all that different when it comes to crippling drivers – by not expected them to be able to? By making them dependent upon “technology” to do what every driver worthy of the title ought to be able to do?

Like back-up (and curbside park) a car without the “assistance” of “technology.”

These two basic competencies were once taught – and expected – of anyone seeking to obtain a license to drive. The underlying assumption being that anyone not able to back-up a car without the “assistance” of “technology” – or curbside park – was probably not someone who ought to be behind the wheel of a moving object operating at road speeds.

Applicants for a driver’s license once had to demonstrate they could competently perform these basic low-speed maneuvers before they were licensed to drive at faster-than-walking speed, for the obvious reasons.

Similarly, it was once assumed that if you could not reverse a trailer towed behind your vehicle without the “assistance” of “technology” (e.g., Ford’s appallingly misnamed Back-Up Pro “technology”) then you had no more business pulling a trailer than a man who can’t swim has diving into the deep end of the pool.

Life jackets, of course, will prevent such a man from drowning. But wouldn’t it be better if he leaned how to swim? Wouldn’t it be preferable if he didn’t need to walk around wearing a life jacket because he might fall into the pool? And what happens if he forgets to wear his life jacket – or it doesn’t work for some reason – and he falls into the pool?

“Technology” works like that when it doesn’t work – and the driver has become dependent on it. Imagine the driver of a truck pulling a trailer who never learned how to back up with a trailer hitched to his truck – who depends on “Pro” assistance “technology” to take care of that – and then one day, the “technology” glitches. Or the cameras that see what’s behind the truck that the truck’s “technology” needs to back itself up when those cameras are fogged up or covered up by ice?

What then?

You have a dangerous driver who is out of his depth behind the wheel of a truck with a trailer hitched to the back of it.

It is almost axiomatic – and there is evidence to support this axiom. Tesla drivers are the most accident-prone drivers, according to data aggregated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) covering model years 2018-2022. Here is one of the key findings – with the implications following:

“Two Teslas, the Model Y and Model S, make the most dangerous cars list despite Tesla’s advanced driver-assist technology.”

Italics added.

You’d think they’d crash less often, given all of their  “advanced driver-assist technology.” But – as initially counter-intuitive as it may seem – it appears the more a driver is “assisted,” the more danger he is in as a consequence of his own diminished driving ability.

This makes a lot of sense when you think about it for a little bit. Would it strengthen the muscles you use to walk – to run, if you do that – if you used them less? If you had a wheelchair to “assist” you down the street?

Babies have to learn to walk and – more to the point – they must develop the muscles and the automatic coordination necessary to walking unassisted. Driving is not dissimilar in that it is also a learned skill that has to be developed – and maintained, by actually doing it. If you stop walking – or let the car do the driving – your ability to walk (and drive competently) diminishes.

And that’s why it makes the sense that the most likely to crash drivers are the ones who drive cars with more “driver assist technology” parenting them.

Maybe it’d be safer for them – and us – if they just learned how to drive.

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