The 17 ways driverless cars could change America. Some are obvous -- fewer accidents, changing layoutsof road and traffic patterns, altering the legal and insurance landscapes. This one took a little thought:
7. Destroying Car Culture: Here we move from the specific to the general, because cars, in America, are not just an appliance. They represent a deep expression of how American culture expressed and asserted itself in the 20th Century. Cars meant independence, and the bond between an American—particularly an American man—and his car was deep and profound, the subject of numerous songs and movies. People drive for fun, to see places, to get away, they tinker with their cars, love their cars, and argue about their merits. That bond will inevitably be lost in a world where the car is no longer controlled and steered by the individual, but is simply a delivery service for a requested address.
Sentiment aside, this is the cost of progress. In the 19th Century, we had a horse culture. Horses were the companion of the settler, the wagon train, the cavalryman, the cowboy. Even if you lived in a big city, where people traveled by carriage and goods were delivered by horse-drawn wagons, most every American knew some of the basics of horsemanship: how to mount a horse, win a horse’s trust, command and steer a horse, and re-shoe a horse at need. Today, horsemanship is the province of the very rich, the very rural, and those who make a living dealing with horses, and is alien to most Americans. In time, the same will be true of car culture—the wealthy will race on private tracks, the country boys and girls will drive off road, but the rest of us will be escorted around by machines without thought for how to drive them. We may not even be able to foresee all the ways that changes how we view our own lives and the culture we live in.
It's a little daunting to consider just how much of our lives revolve around the car and "car culture." From the moment I got my license at 16 and had to worry about how to get more use from my dad's car, almost every decision I made had a car somewhere in there. Even when I was deciding where to buy a house when I came back to Fort Wayne, at the top of my list was "How hard or easy will it be to drive to work?" When using a car is nor more interesting or noteworthy than taking an elevator, all that will change.
