Give me Liberty, or let me take a nap.

Automobile travel is one of the few ways you can still cross the country without an x-ray and patdown, despite the hours it takes to get your paperwork cleared at the DMV every couple years.

Touring out West, driving on long straight stretches of highway, I’ve often longed for an auto-pilot that would take the wheel for a little while. On some of those long boring drives it would be nice to take a short nap without pulling over; though in retrospect, I probably have once or twice.

But the driverless cars envisioned in the labs of Google are much worse than a simple autopilot, they’re a means to give the Government more control of our lives. From Market Watch:

One of the biggest issues will be the rules under which public infrastructures and public safety officers may be empowered to override how autonomous vehicles are controlled.

It is not hard to imagine why they might want such override power. One is for traffic control… Overrides could be used to restrict certain vehicles from sensitive locations, like military sites.

More intrusive controls may be called for to deal with crime. For instance, high-speed chases could become a thing of the past. The vehicles of drunk/drugged individuals who insist on doing their own driving could be pulled over if their cars’ actions could be controlled from the outside. (full story)

In the future, roadside sobriety checkpoints will no longer be avoidable with a quick U-turn, although I can’t see the need to conduct those roadside searches when the cars have built-in designated drivers.

It’s a complete abrogation of Liberty. The automobile is an American icon because of the freedom it allows. From the very first mass automotive migration of the Oakies, to Ridesharing Beatniks and Hitchhiking Hippies; the Automobile opened the Continent to exploration in a way that never occurred in rail bound Europe, or impoverished Third World Nations. Cars are as much a symbol of American Independence as the cowboy.

For the cost of a tank of gas, you can go anywhere. The ability of citizens to move quickly both limits hurricane casualties and provides great video footage of tornadoes. I can’t imagine why Americans would be willing to hand their steering wheels over to a Central Authority.

Unfortunately, the possibility of it happening in the near future is very real. Young people just don’t like driving anymore. Millennials have grown up being chauffeured from school to soccer practice, and more young people today are without drivers licenses, than at any time in modern history.

A nap can’t be so important that we’re willing to sacrifice the freedom to drive. If we let this pass we’d have to be asleep at the wheel.

And too many young people are out walking around in pajamas.