Mark Webber, the formula one driver, once described Australia as a "nanny state" because Lewis Hamilton's car was impounded under Victorian "hoon laws".
He had certainly been out of the country too long if he'd forgotten that the larrikin who owns a hotted up Holden is basically an accident waiting to happen - & I, for one, would rather it simply didn't happen.
You can call that impinging on an individual's rights to be an idiot, or call it improving the likelihood of little old ladies crossing the street without being killed - it's a fine line. It's also a big distance if you move slowly.
Of course, sometimes these nanny state laws work too well. It's a sure thing that helmets save lives - bicycle & motorbike - but anyone stupid enough to ride without one should take up their complaint with Darwin. Children don't necessarily understand "survival of the fittest", but adults should be required to prove that they have a head as hard as the road before they are allowed to discard protection.
Seat-belts are the same - except that they don't even make your head sweat.
This is how we minimise risks to individuals - expert recommendations become mandated by law. It's a simple process supported by a large majority of the population, & railed against by anarchists whose contributions to society will be forgotten before even they are.
Of course, these are a relatively easy sell. There are no car manufacturers saying that we need cars so powerful that they break the sound barrier, so no-one advocates "relaxing" the hoon laws. We have manufacturers supporting safety initiatives, because keeping drivers alive is a good thing for their business - it keeps sales going & their target market returning.
What if we, as a society, started seeing the number of cars (or trucks) on the road as the ultimate danger that needs to be dealt with? I suspect that dealers wouldn't be so supportive.
In fact, they might concentrate advertising even more on the safety features of the vehicle - how you're safer being on the inside than the outside of a car, & could basically live inside one, parking outside your office or the school overnight.
How about if you remove the human factor, the risk, & have cars that almost drive themselves?
But right now, cars don't kill people - they can't because they're not autonomous.
We can't live without cars because they are seen as a tool that does our bidding.
It's our right to own & drive those cars.
Nobody wants to go back to the stone age when people were riding horses around & filling the streets with a stink that made it nearly impossible to breathe.
No-one wants that.
At some point, the nanny state - egged on by those who don't see driving as a right or even a privilege - will turn its attention to the statistics of road fatalities & find that "something" could be done.
A shifting focus within society - triggered by a few simple ethical dilemmas brought on by autonomous vehicles, for example, & backed by a new push by car manufacturers that separated out property damage from medical impact (where any accident is a good one where no-one gets hurt) - could make the nanny state move against something that could have been society-wise beneficial if developed over time & in the right way (for once).
Utopia would have autonomous vehicles on "rails" & out of sight (like magic). Society would give people the freedom to travel anywhere & see it all pass by (like an emperor in their carriage).
It's very hard to conceive of some compromise that will deliver both with equal usefulness.
"Market forces" won't. Government must. It won't be a popular decision either, so government won't.
Sometimes the "rights" of the individual - of the voter! - needs adjusting first.
Before changing the government as a knee-jerk reaction to their making a decision we don't like, we should learn how to change the government so that they make the decisions we don't like, regardless.
Everyone wants to breathe clean air. Nobody wants to drive an electric car.
Everyone wants to survive their next trip on the road. Nobody wants to obey all of the traffic rules.
Sometimes, a nanny state has to step in & say "No more lead in petrol! Slow down!"
Sometimes we have to accept that they're only doing it because we won't do it ourselves.
