And no, it’s not an engineer. Or even just someone who works for a car company. It will be – it is – someone who works for the government.
Her name is Heidi King and she is deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – the government bureaucracy that somehow acquired the power to dictate car design. She will be testifying today at a House oversight hearing Wednesday about what NHTSA is doing as regards regulating auto safety, and on its priorities for the coming year.
It warms the heart, doesn’t it?
NHTSA will also be fatwa’ing rules pertaining to automated cars.  King, et al, will decide how much risk we’re going to be exposed to. Our decisions will be limited to whether to buy what they they decree. But we will have no choice about being exposed to automated cars driven by others.
Well, driven by the Hive Mind, with others (meatsacks) on board for the automated ride.
Last fall, the House passed the SELF DRIVE Act, which sets the framework for NHTSA to regulate testing and deployment of automated vehicles and prevent states from interfering with the setting of vehicle performance standards. Similar legislation is stalled in the Senate, where safety groups successfully have argued that it gives auto and tech companies too much freedom to deploy technology without having backup systems for human control.
NHTSA is expected to unveil a third round of fatwas governing automated vehicle development later this year.
. . .
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Nice emphasis of the line about those pesky meddling state legislatures being forbidden from interference.
Of course there will only be one true solution to every problem. Of course success will only be possible on a national (or global) scale. Top down thinking is right thinking.
The hubris of these a**holes is what continues to gall me.
Great, another Liberal FemiNazi Bitch who, doubtless, is incapable of safely operating any machinery that isn’t fully automated and politically correct, lol!
Isn’t it interesting how that type gravitates to government “work”?
Our friend “studs,” too.
Orwell had a great line in 1984 about “Beetle-like” men who “seemed to proliferate in the various ministries.”
Amen.
Doubleplus that.
Way back years ago my boss had a networked printer on his desk. He didn’t need a networked printer any more than anyone else, but it was a status symbol.
This was still before IT locked everything down, so he got to name it himself. His choice? “Technocrat.” He claimed it was ironic, but in time it came to pass. Today he’s a fairly high-up guy in the bureaucracy, more than happy to ramble on for hours about the minutia of what exactly he does all day. Yes, what he does is somewhat important (and one of those jobs that no one else really wants), but his level of enthusiasm for the subject is way above what’s warranted. He is the very definition of a company man.
But at least he’s reliable and mostly truthful. If he wasn’t things would go bad very quickly. That’s a lot more than I can say about most bureaucrat-managers in the company, most of whom are going to be outsourced or simply replaced with a web site over the next few years. Maybe they all know they’re useless and therefore just grabbing whatever they can before the fall. I correct myself. They’re useful in they serve as a buffer between bad decisions and employees.
When people ask me why I don’t have much faith in government to do the right thing I tell them because I work for a big corporation. The only difference between us and the government is we can’t legally shoot you if you don’t buy our stuff.
Late reply, but there was a Dilbert strip about this type on October 28, 1994:
https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-10-28
You forgot that all cars will further have mandated sources of music, such as the kdlang channel (if you get my drift) or the constant drone of “Govt Propaganda News”…the sound level and channel will also be dictated by Ministry of Truth. An there will be no traveling anywhere not authorized by the Ministry of Work…so go back to sleep, little sheep…your betters know what’s best….
INGSOC vs “Red Barchetta”