PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES; AND OUR FREEDOM

The question is simple: If circumstances conspired to take away cars and licenses so no one could drive again, would anyone feel free?

Maybe I would. I couldn’t bum rides or hitchhike, true. But if no one could drive; if everyone’s cars were taken, public transportation might improve, right?  You  know — planes, trains, and buses — how would anyone feel?

Speaking for myself, I think I might get sad and depressed. Thinking about not being able to come and go when I want, of having to depend on public transportation to venture anywhere more than a few miles from home makes me sick to my stomach. Freedom to travel on my own terms is a big part of what it takes for me to feel free and, yes, happy.

So why torment myself with thoughts about something that’s never going to happen? What’s the point?

In truth, many people don’t drive, especially in large metro areas like New York City, for example. Not driving is a choice. In theory at least, New Yorkers can buy cars and move to the suburbs. Knowing they can drive if they choose makes not driving not so bad, at least for most.

Here’s my point. Someone is always telling us we are free, because we can vote for our leaders and start businesses; even keep the profits. No one can be arrested without cause. If arrested, all have the guarantee of due process and the presumption of innocence under the Constitution. Everyone can own guns and fire them in their backyards.

Is it possible that whoever they are might be right?

Think about it. 

80% of citizens don’t vote regularly. 98% don’t own businesses unless franchises and pyramid-schemes like Amway count; then it’s 10%.

Few citizens are ever arrested, much less charged with a crime. And most folks — those who aren’t psychopaths — take no pleasure disturbing neighbors by firing rifle rounds in their backyards. In general most don’t participate in the privileges that define freedom.  People don’t feel their freedoms most of the time.

But here’s something else to think about: 95% drive cars.

Isn’t it cars that give the feeling of being free? Take away cars and no one has the same carefree feeling– no matter what the Constitution guarantees or profs teach in school or university.

People can go into the back yard and fire a hundred rounds from an assault rifle. All that will happen is their ears start to ring and their neighbors hate them. 

The thrill of freedom comes from stepping on the accelerator of a favorite car and feeling Earth slide away below us. Freedom is the feeling that anyone can come-and-go on their own terms whenever they want.

Many Americans seem not to grasp that the right to drive is being methodically and relentlessly stripped away. In cities and towns across America, congestion on streets is presenting a clear and present danger to our way of life; it’s diminishing the freedom to travel under our own power; under our own direction, which is what everyone wants to enjoy.

Lousy roads, poorly planned road construction, neglected road repair, deteriorated bridges and tunnels — all assault freedom and degrade our quality of life. 

It seems obvious that four-hour waits in line to vote wrecks freedom, because waits discourage voting, the foundational process of any democracy.  But four-hour commutes, traffic slowdowns and standstills are just as disruptive. They break the efficiency of our lives and muffle the nation’s economy.

The folks who run America seem to care little about voting or roads. Americans might want to step up to put pressure on politicians to make driving free and unencumbered — make freedom on the road the number-one national priority.

Driving free must be first-in-line; it is our most heartfelt and defining freedom.

I learned that a few companies have already designed aircraft to take the place of cars. In the years prior to 911, I toured a number of these firms to learn firsthand how they implemented computer software to organize their engineering drawings, bills-of-materials, and tech-specs for vendors.

The plan, then, was to unleash at the right time a new era of transportation options for the general public that included light aircraft.

These companies were designing planes to fly on autopilot along pre-established routes in the sky. They took advantage of the three dimensions of space the same way city planners use tall buildings to create more working space.

The idea was to eliminate congestion and speed traffic by stacking routes and putting computers in charge of flying instead of pilots.

It all seemed like a good idea at the time. But the events of 911 changed planners’ views of what it might mean to put hundreds-of-thousands — maybe millions — of flying vehicles in the airspace above America — even if the craft were flying on autopilot under the guidance of computers.

Had 911 not happened, the plans were that by now on any given day at any given time people who looked up to the sky would see and hear hundreds, maybe thousands, of high-flying aircraft buzzing to and fro 24/7.

This high-flying, high-tech solution to highway congestion though shelved for now sits yellowing in the dark closet of national transportation options. It can be implemented when the time is right in the same way as the internet and personal-computer. But when it’s implemented, it will pose big problems.

3D highways in the sky populated by hundreds-of-thousands of computer-guided light-aircraft will have the same effect on travelers as if they were set on automated conveyor belts and whisked hither and yon.

The thrill that comes from commanding a piece of machinery and directing it to go where we decide will be gone. The feeling of empowerment and freedom experienced in cars will evaporate. 

Because — you know what’s coming, right?  If computers can direct the flights of millions of aircraft in three-dimensional space, they can do the same to cars on two-dimensional roads. And soon, very soon, they will.

Because of over-population and the inevitable congestion it brings, the time may come when people will no longer be permitted to experience the freedom of a fast car on an empty road.

Our ancestors rode horses, after all. Most people have long-since adapted to the disappearance of the horse. Perhaps people will adapt. Circumstances will force grandchildren of today’s parents to go to private tracks to experience the lost joy of driving a car.

Riding in a computer-controlled helicopter, airplane, or other flying craft might become the norm for future travelers. People will be passengers — not drivers or pilots or navigators — for the duration of their trips. People will become dependent on another technology they don’t understand and can’t control.

We are likely to become a nation of flying and driving sheep who graze in a huge three-dimensional sheep-pen.

Will freedom ring?  Will people feel the thrill that comes from directing the path of complex machines that run like wild horses?  Will they feel the power that comes from being free?

Will children of the future experience the exhilarating freedom enjoyed by their parents during their season of control when no one felt threatened by a vice-grip embrace of an artificial-intelligence that is hovering ominously on the horizon? 

I don’t know.

Billy Lee