Article Image

IPFS News Link • Inventions

How Many Inventions of the Past Would Be Declared "Too Dangerous" to Make Today?

• https://fee.org, by James Walpole

I was driving to work today when I realized how nonchalantly I was piloting my land-speeding hunk of aluminum. Cars are extraordinary, complex, and dangerous machines, but most of us can drive them comfortably and without much second thought. That's extraordinary.

Then I thought, "There's no way these things would be allowed if they were invented today."

I remembered quickly that this was not an original observation. Many of the self-driving car's biggest advocates point out the large number of fatalities caused by human driving error as good reasons that driving might be outlawed in a self-driving future. In a quote featured on the Verge, Elon Musk says as much:

"It's too dangerous," Musk said. "You can't have a person driving a two-ton death machine."


PurePatriot