Rage Against the Machine

“A man’s got to know his limitations.”

— Dirty Harry

The one thing I’m going to miss when driverless autos take over the world is — the car horn.

With driverless automation, there won’t be a need for car horns anymore. Think about it.

I love to use (e.g. abuse) my car horn. It’s the sword of road justice, and the war canon of revenge. “Death Wish” and vigilante god Charles Bronson be damned, we can’t run over people or smash into stupid drivers to teach them a lesson. That’s what the car horn is for. A weapon. A pacifier. Hey jerk who cut me off in traffic…..enjoy the sound of my middle finger.

Whaaaaaaaaa!……Whaaaaaaaaaa!…..Whaaaaaaaaa!

That said, what i witnessed today near The Strip in Las Vegas made me think and it made me laugh. Here, I’ll explain.

What made me *think* was this: When driving, there’s construction and detours and traffic cones everywhere. Especially here in Las Vegas. It’s common to see three-lane boulevards toothpaste-squeezed into a narrow single lane of passage. Of course, this always happens around rush hour. When I’m in a hurry. When late. Move it, you fucking shits!

When traffic *merges*, there’s an unwritten drivers’ code. One car from one lane, and another car from the next. It’s like a zipper. Most drivers understand the code and merge with the flow.

Well, driverless taxis have no conscience. They don’t make friends. They don’t care about the other driver and upsetting the natural order of the universe.

I watched on Desert Inn as a Zoox, which is one of those cube-looking robotic taxis merged with traffic but then didn’t adhere to “the code.” Zoox saw a lane and an opportunity and darted into the free space. Well, that set of the driver in front of me like a ticking time bomb.

This isn’t a hit piece on driverless vehicles. I’m generally supportive of technology and things that improve public safety. However, witnessing this merge traffic situation made me think about it. There is no substitute for a hand wave. There is no robot that understands common courtesy. In essence, driverless cars see the road as war zones. They flood the space. They conquer the odometer. The conquest is in getting from Point A to Point B without having to pay the labor cost of a driver.

I mentioned that I laughed, and I’ll explain that now, too. The driver who festered with entitlement and felt he was cut off because the road code was violated by the Zoox taxi robot blasted his horn like he was Curtis LeMay raining down flames on Tokyo. He let that cube taxi have it. Whaaaaaaaaa! …… Whaaaaaaaaaa! …..Whaaaaaaaaa!

I watched from afar and behind, wondering what the noise-fuckery was all about. Doesn’t that horn-hog driver know the auto-robot taxi is basically like a computer chip affixed to a satellite signal? No one is watching, or listening — pal. Oh, except for the terrified tourist family Zoox passengers probably from Nebraska wondering who the fuck the road rage terrorist is that’s blasting his horn like a psychopathic madman.

Watching this clash of intellect and technology in front of my eyes, I felt like blasting my horn at the asshole just to make it a fair fight. But instead, I just shook my head and lectured Marieta with one of my pearls of road wisdom.

“Look at that jerk-off. Why is he blasting his horn at an Zoox taxi? The robot can’t hear the horn and that guy looks like a fool! Doesn’t he know how stupid he looks?”

Marieta (who is used to my rants and has developed her own special skill set micromanaging my outrage-rant-chaos) deadpanned the perfect delivery of a retort:

“You mean like when you scream at the television when watching the news and sports?”

Pregnant pause. About ten seconds of dead silence filled the front seat.

Softly nodding. Sheepish half grin. Head down. Point conceded. Defeat acknowledged.

Yes indeed — a man’s got to know his limitations.