The open road. The freedom. The romance of wide open throttle on a long stretch of asphalt.
None of that exists in Los Angeles anymore.
Sure, on a holiday weekend at three in the morning you can let loose a little, but the normal condition for Los Angelinos is a bumper to bumper, stop and go, passive-aggressively, road ragey experience. You can’t live in the state for any length of time without witnessing the most common stories we all share. The jerks who skip the line of cars to merge at the last possible second. The jerks who cut you off while driving ten miles an hour slower than you were going. The INSANE number of people doing anything else instead of focusing on driving, even watching videos on tablets (actual pic from one of my commutes)…
We spend so much time in metal/plastic/glass containers we cease being human, as do the other drivers around us. Starting and stopping, from zero to ten miles an hour to zero, it’s impossible not to zone out. The unnatural lurching, lulling you into a hypnotic state on the bubble’s edge of rage. When another person cuts you off or pulls a dumb move, they’re not even really a person in your brain anymore. “That Lexus just cut me off.” “What is that Volvo doing?” “Why is that Prius riding my butt?” The entire experience is so dehumanizing, why not cut the last cords and let the entire driving experience be managed by non-human thinking machines?
Even with planned road and highway improvements, the population of Los Angeles pretty much guarantees that the streets will be saturated for some time to come. We could make some of that commute time more productive if we don’t have to actually operate our vehicles: catch up on some emails, look over a pitch, get a little writing done. Distracted driving is no longer a problem when people don’t need to operate a vehicle while trying to check Twitter.
Driverless cars will be able to better judge time and distance, or when to run a yellow light. No last second emergency lane changes. Computers will understand that when two lanes merge into one, that if everyone “zippers”, alternating who takes turns, that we’ll all get though faster. Computers wont selfishly try to cut in line, and they wont randomly slow down on a highway when the road gently curves.
We can turn the human driven car into the next horse, impractical for daily commuting, but a few enthusiasts still like to take them for a spin on a track.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go mentally prepare for a “quick” hour long trip to an area of town only 10 miles away from my office…