The driverless car: Just say no

It seems driverless cars have gone from something dreamed up by writers of science fiction movies to, in the coming years, a certain reality.

Movies like "Minority Report," "Demolition Man" and "Total Recall" all had driverless vehicles. Even the original and equally cheesy Batman TV series from the '60s featured a driverless Batmobile. Of course, plenty of futuristic movies have also featured flying cars, and that hasn't worked out so well – at least not so far. Weren't we supposed to have them by now?

Some, including me, think that the driverless car is a bad idea – if for no other reason, that I enjoy driving. I prefer to be behind the wheel and in charge. I don't want some robot or empty seat chauffeuring me about.

Still, there are more than enough bad drivers on the road who might benefit from a driverless car. I experienced one, almost having a literal run-in, just the other day. You've seen them out there. I'm driving down the road and a car is stopped at an intersection hundreds of yards ahead. I see her, and it sure appears she sees me. She waits until I'm almost upon her and pulls out, crossing traffic just feet in front of me. She could have used such a computer to usurp her pitiful processing skill.

But are driverless cars just another misguided achievement? Is this another instance of just because we can, doesn't mean we should?

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All machines controlled by computers, or some form of an electronic brain, have severe limitations. They lack the ability to feel, emote and reason. Sometimes there is no clear-cut quantifiably correct decision between choice A and choice B. Many times we are presented with choices that are not black and white, and it is only the human mind (and heart) that is capable of discerning these nuances. A machine, however well and complete its programming, will never be able to fully achieve this level of conscience thought – or should, I might add.

We all know what happens – every time. We've seen it "The Matrix," "The Terminator" and "I, Robot." When will we ever learn! (Just kidding.)

Seriously – the moral consequences could be devastating – so much so that even that iconic conservative site PBS.org has weighed in, asking: "How will driverless cars make life-or-death decisions?" That's a darn good question. The answer is, as I've already stated, they can't, but let's see what PBS offers.

The PBS writer notes that regarding life-or-death decisions, "choices about who might live or die in a crash are already being made – by the so-called 'moral codes' that are preprogrammed into a car's neurology."

Well, that's not at all horrifying. The people who write the code that controls these vehicles claim "that autonomous cars do not make judgments based on value, they make them based on protocol." Again, not scary at all. It's all fine to program a car to make the correct stopping and turning procedure, but as we all know, there is much more to driving than just that.

Although the car itself can have no capacity for value judgment, "moral decisions will come into play when programmers decide how to use which algorithms."

So the morality of a driverless car, for want of a better term, is and will be determined by geeks at Google and Microsoft and Apple. What do we know of these individuals? Maybe not much except that 99.8 percent of them are lefties.

As a demonstrable conservative, this scares me. Are these the same liberals who write algorithms that limit access or exposure of conservatives on the Internet? Who's to say some programmer won't build in a conservative kill code into the car's CPU that causes it to drive off a bridge or run it into oncoming traffic?

That's ridiculous. How could a car know if you're liberal or conservative – I mean other than that Bernie Sanders bumper sticker? These cars, like a lot of things, will eventually have electronic I.D. like a fingerprint scanner. Within five seconds of scanning your fingerprint, that car will know your voting record and which sites you visit on the Web. That's when the secret algorithm is activated, and it's bye-bye right-winger!

You're probably saying to yourself – this guy is nuts. I may be nuts for other reasons, but this was just a fun conspiracy theory – although I don't doubt some would subscribe to it.

All kidding aside, my opinion is one shared by many who bemoan the mass and eventual forced implementation of the autonomous car. It's a bad idea, and as previously stated is another instance of just because we can, doesn't mean we should. We shouldn't.