Why Are We Still Driving?
4/30/202657 min
Self-driving cars are here. But what kind of future will they bring: safe roads and extra time or dystopian traffic jams? My guest this week is Andrew Miller, who writes about self-driving cars and transportation policy. I love the open road, so I press him on what’s lost when we give away driving to the robots.
- 0:00 - Intro
- 01:27 - The sales pitch for Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox
- 12:24 - How autonomous are autonomous cars?
- 20:14 - Liability: Who is responsible for an accident?
- 31:56 - Political obstacles: Spying, data, labor
- 38:53 - 20:35: The good and bad scenarios
- 48:25 - Are we losing the “romance of the road”?
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Ross Douthat· Host0:15
[upbeat music] From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. It feels like we've been hearing about self-driving cars for a long time, but now they're really here, ferrying people to work and school and nightlife from Los Angeles to Nashville, and poised to spread to just about every big city in America. My guest this week is very optimistic about a future where the cars take over. He writes about self-driving automobiles and transportation policy on his Substack, Changing Lanes, and he's the co-author of a recent book with the stark title, The End of Driving. We talked about the potential benefits of this transformation, and as someone who kind of loves the open road, I pressed him on what's lost in freedom and mastery and the very birthright of Americans if we don't have to be