Self Driving Cars

Thoughts from a car guy

I should preface this whole thing and say it bluntly: I am 100% pro-self driving cars. They will save lives. They will save the tedium of commuting (which in itself is more awful for your psyche than almost any other aspect of modern life). They will change the fundamental architecture of how cities are built and how we treat transportation. I get it. I’m very much on that side.

Buuuuut.

Part of me wonders if the first generation who grows up in a 100% self driving world will look back on movies like Fast and the Furious with a sort of nostalgia that I did when I first saw American Graffiti.

There are elements of car culture that I’ll miss and that don’t have an analog in the self-driving world. Sure, we’ll probably always have tracks to race and drive aggressively on and that’s great, but car culture is so much bigger than driving culture. Heck, most of us could care less about racing; our ideals revolve around the machines themselves and our bond to them.

You see, I’m part of that group of people who think cars have souls.

They are machines, yes, but not appliances. The self-driving car is an appliance of transportation: it gets you from point A to B and that’s great! … if that’s solely your goal. For some of us, it isn’t.

What we put into our vehicle isn’t mere transportation. It’s attitude and spirit and freedoms. It’s being able to see your friend from across the freeway and go catch up to them, or seeing that iconic car in a parking lot and knowing that your friend is somewhere around there, even before apps had a GPS receiver on every phone to tell you the same thing.

We existed in a world where our cars were an extension of our personhood.

American Graffiti knew that. Fast and Furious knew that. Speed Racer and Redline and Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit. We’ve had a long history of cars as iconic as actors, on and off screen.

And so part of my feelings here is that we’re not losing driving control, we’re sort of losing an identity and a medium for self expression.

Now. Let’s not be confused: cars kill over a million people every year. I don’t argue that my sense of personal identity or my nostalgia for sitting on a hood with a girl and a milkshake overlooking the sunset outweighs that.

But I will miss driving. Sometimes I’m just coming home from getting groceries and the sunroof is open and my favorite song is playing and I crack a second gear pull onto the highway, face split with the widest grin you will ever see me smile.

I will miss the mountains and curving roads where I throw her a little hard into each corner, and I feel the whole world rotate around my hips. You take each corner with precision and concentration and in that flow you are free. I will miss that.

So I can see both sides.

On one hand, safety is great and the convenience will be unparalleled short of having properly designed, walkable cities (which I’ve come to accept as an even loftier dream than cars that can operate by themselves in a blizzard)

On the other, as with a lot of societal evolutions, the sanitization and safety of things often bleaches out the very soul from them. Sometimes the passion of something is the danger, is the risk, is the freedom. That’s why we snowboard. That’s why we skydive and ride motorcycles and climb mountains. There’s deeply emotional reasons to risk life and limb for something you love to do.

I figure I have about a decade left with a 6 speed in my hand.

I’ll see you on the 93A.