Self-driving cars and Darwin

Self-driving cars are in the news these days as the technology starts to gel and businesses begin to make strategic investments.

It’s certainly an exciting breakthrough. Self-driving cars have the potential to reduce traffic jams and use the road system more efficiently. That could make an immediate difference in my neighborhood, where many drivers have trouble navigating a roundabout and are unclear on the concept of the four-way stop.

Self-driving cars could make a dramatic improvement in public safety by preventing many traffic accidents. Drunk driving could become a thing of the past, and senility would no longer limit mobility for senior citizens.

I have only one quibble. Driving motor vehicles is an opportunity for the least intelligent and most foolhardy members of our species to improve the gene pool by removing themselves from it. I’m a big fan of the Darwin Awards. Self-driving cars will allow the worst drivers to survive and reproduce. This may not be a good thing.

Darwin’s natural selection does not work in my adopted home state of New Mexico because motorists rarely encounter traffic. Our sparsely populated hinterland is safe for inept, inattentive and inebriated drivers who would never survive a big-city freeway. Bad driving may be genetic here, with entire families who have not used a turn signal in generations. That may be why my auto insurance rates went up when I moved from Chicago to Albuquerque.

I have similar reservations about jaywalking laws. In the city neighborhood where I grew up, jaywalking was part of our heritage. Our mothers taught us to look both ways when crossing streets or playing in the traffic, and children grew up agile and smart.

I once attended a conference in Seattle, which has particularly strict jaywalking laws. When I walked back to my hotel late at night, the streets were deserted with hardly a car in sight. Yet lonely groups of pedestrians were dutifully waiting at the curb for the traffic light to change. They gave me incredulous looks as I confidently strode across the empty streets. It was eerie.

I guess it’s compassionate to help people who do not have the sense to look both ways. But do we really want people who can’t cross a street to populate the next generation (or the next election)?

So I worry a little about the impact of self-driving cars and jaywalking laws, but the human race probably will continue to evolve. After all, we still have motorcycles.