Ever had someone bump into your elbow when you were trying to drink a cup of hot coffee? Advance Driver Assistance “technology” called Lane Keep Assist works on the same principle.
Here is the scenario: You are driving down an empty highway and decide to change lanes to avoid a road obstruction but you fail to signal before you do, a vehicle equipped with the Advanced Driver Assistance “technology” styled Lane Keep Assist will attempt to prevent you from altering your course by attempting to force-steer you back into your prior course. This peremptory electronic obnoxiousness forces you to exert sufficient contrary force to return to the course you’d intended. It can be unsettling when this happens and even dangerous, if the herky-jerky ends up unsettling the vehicle or as in the scenario, you end up hitting the road obstruction.
On a narrow road, an over-correction to counter the computer’s unwanted correction might cause an outside wheel to drop off the road and onto the shoulder.
In the hands of someone without a lot of hand strength and unready for the sudden input of “assistance,” the pulling to the left or right could result in counter-pulling right in front of the path of another car.
Or into a tree.
But why not just signal your intended course, say the defenders of all this “assistance”? Doing so will cancel the “assistance,” they argue.
And it will. But it is stupid and mindless to signal when there is no one around to see it.
Do you reflexively do things just because or because there is a reason to do them? It is an important distinction.
When there are other cars in your orbit, it is reasonable to use your turn signals. You can see them and want them to see you. Or rather, you want the other drivers to see your intentions. This involves an exercise of that dread thing, judgment–the thing which follows upon the assimilation of pertinent information, weighed and considered. It is the very last thing desired by those who developed “assistance” technology.
What they desire and what the system we’re saddled under demands is the negation of judgment. Instead, mindless, passive, and reflexive rote performance of the required ritual.
Using traffic signals every single time one turns left or right irrespective of the presence or absence of traffic is merely one of many examples but a useful one in that it conveys the underlying essence of the demand being made.
Here is a rule–it must be obeyed, regardless of circumstances, without thought.
What is the purpose of this if it is not to condition people to the condition of livestock? Cattle are not expected and not permitted to decide whether it’s a good idea for them to follow the cow ahead of them down the chute. They are expected to follow and those that hesitate are assisted.
The techniques used to condition us are more subtle. Instead of the prod, we get the light and the buzzer. The wheel steers itself in the direction opposite the one we intended. The engine turns itself off at every red light or whenever the car comes to a stop. Yes, there are (usually) ways to turn it all off. But it is usually the case that all these iterations of “assistance” turn themselves back on after the car is shut down. When you return and start the car back up, these systems often have to be turned off, again.
It wears you out and eventually, maybe you give in and leave them on.
This takes care of most people. The rest will be taken care of when it is no longer possible to turn it all off. Prior forms of “assistance” technology weren’t called that when they first appeared because when they did some 30 years ago, most people were not yet so browbeaten by their government-corporate overlords as to put up with so cloying and offensive a term.
So they called them by more straightforward names, such as anti-lock brakes and traction/stability control. At first, these were optional and only a few cars offered them.
Time passed and every car came standard with them. At some point, the off switch was no longer included. They are on all the time, whether you want to be “assisted” or not.
So it will be with what is now openly called “assistance” technology, inflicted on a populace so degraded it no longer takes offense at being told, right to their faces, that they are in need of “assistance.”
Soon enough, inevitably enough, they will be “assisted” out of the driver’s seat altogether. Perhaps they will be allowed to sit there as a passenger gawping with vapid enthusiasm at the Holo-ride displays meant to keep their minds off the condition they’ve been reduced to by all of this “assistance.”
Running off the road and into a tree will then be a kind of mercy killing.
Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
