July 23, 2024 • 16 mins
George Noory and the National Motorists Association's Jay Beeber discuss the regulatory restrictions clogging America's roadways.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Jay that is going too slow on the freeway is dangerous.
What about going way too fast?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Well, you know our freeways, the controlled access highways. The
US interstate highway system is actually built on the same
model as the German autobonds. So if you're a fairly
competent driver and you're not weaving in and out of traffic,
you can go reasonable speed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I mean, look at.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
The speed limits around the country. In Utah, the same
highway is eighty miles an hour as a speed limit,
and in other parts of the country the exact same
design of a highway is sometimes fifty five miles an
hour or fifty or sixty miles an hour. So the
speed limits on our highways are pretty arbitrary with regards
to the jurisdiction that you're driving through. And so what
(00:58):
we recommend in terms of how we set speed limits
is something called the eighty fifth percentile speed. That's the
speed that eighty five percent of the people don't exceed.
It's the natural speed that everybody sort of congregates on
the roadway. So the most dangerous thing actually is speed
variation that is, some people going much faster, some people
going much slower. But if everybody's going about the same speed,
(01:21):
that's been proven to be the most safe thing, even
if that's a little faster than say what somebody arbitrarily
stuck a speed limit on that particular roadway.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
For There's nothing worse though than a driver doing forty
on the freeway right exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, And it's even worse if they're stuck in the
left lane and refuse to move over. The National Motors
Association one of the things we do in most years
is we have what we call Lane Courtesy Month, and
we try to encourage people, you know, stay to the right,
pass left, and leave that left lane open for the
(01:58):
people that want to drive a reasonable speed on the roadway.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Now, some states have a high speed lane, but you
have to have more than one person in the car.
Is that happening throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, Well, what they're doing is they have they have
carpool lanes that has been proven not to be very successful.
But what they're starting to do now is they're starting
to have these lanes in which you have to pay
to be in those lanes. There's nothing wrong with building
a lane in which you have to pay for. If
that's an extra lane. The problem would be is if
(02:32):
they took away a lane that we've already paid for
with our tax dollars and then made that uh and
a lane in which you had to pay for. So
so it depends on whether or not you know how
how you built the lane, and how you how you've
used that money, and whether you've used new money for
that and added to capacity. But what we're seeing around
the country is what they really want to do is
(02:54):
they want to reduce capacity to have this thing called
road diets. And I don't if anybody's heard that before,
but what that basically means is they want to take
away car lanes because there's too much car lane you're going,
you know, it's too easy for you to get around,
So they want to take away car lanes. And this
is happening in a lot of cities. Los Angeles and
New York City has done this, you know, a lot
(03:15):
of major cities and sometimes in smaller places around the country,
and it can lead to some very very dangerous things
that have happened. You probably have covered on your show
the fire up in Paradise, California, when that happened. And
one of the things that happened there A lot of
people don't know this is that they did a road
(03:36):
diet in the middle of town on that roadway, after
they were told that the route out of town was
already not safe. What they did was they took away
a car lane and a number of people I think
it was eighty somewhi people lost their lives in that,
and part of that was because people couldn't get out
and you know, in an area, in a mountainous area
(03:57):
where there was only one route out and they took
a car lane. And unfortunately, that's what some of this
ideology leads to, leads to things that are much less safe,
not more safe.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Jade, does your organization ever look at road rage?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
You know, it is something that we don't spend a
lot of time on, but it is it's an interesting question.
A lot of what's happening with road rage nowadays, I
think is people are very frustrated by the policies that
are making their commutes and their ability to get around
much more difficult. So they're stuck in traffic for no reason.
(04:33):
They're frustrated by that. But of course we certainly can't
condone anybody doing anything dangerous on the roadway or being
unsafe to other people on the roadway. We think people
need to be courteous. That's why we promote the lane
courtesy and you know, people need to get along and
you know, but people also need to be courteous. So
(04:55):
you know, if somebody wants to go a little faster,
then you get out of their way, don't don't try
to block them in intentionally.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And I'm convinced road rage occurs when a bad driver
or in consider a driver does something to a person
who's having a bad day.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely what leads to this kind
of thing. I mean, certainly, I think just everything in
our society now is a little bit too close to
the boiling point. So we really knew need to kind
of take a step back just overall. But we tend to,
and this is more of a psychological thing, that we
(05:32):
tend to ascribe bad motives to people when that may
not be their intention. You know that guy cut me off, Well,
maybe he just didn't see you, or he wasn't paying attention,
or he's having a bad day.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Or he made a mistake.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
A little bit of grace. Yeah, maybe just made a mistake,
you know, I you know, I accidentally, you know, a
couple of weeks ago, I actually made a mistake and
and you know, unfortunately I didn't quite cut somebody off,
but somebody got mad at something that I did on
the roadway and they, you know, they came after me
and driving like a maniac. That's not going to get
you anywhere. That's not going to help you. You're going
(06:05):
to hurt somebody. Don't do that, you know, just just
let it go and and and don't be you know,
don't don't don't put more people in danger because you know,
you you you know, you can't just sort of say, well,
you know, maybe that person's having a bad day, or
maybe that person just made a mistake. They weren't intending
it towards me. Everybody takes things a little too personally
these days, and we need to we need to have
(06:27):
a little bit more grace to people.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I think I tried to go out of my way
to help people. Somebody's trying to cut into traffic and
they're stuck on the side, I'll slow down, let them
go in. Or somebody do this where they put their
turn signal on to change lanes. Nobody lets them in.
I'll let them in.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, I do the same thing because you know what,
here's the thing. I want to treat people the way
I would like to be treated on the roadway. That's
one of the things that we promote in our organization
is this sort of the golden rule, and you know,
treat people the way you want to be treated on
the roadway. Be courteous. If somebody's trying to merge, let
them merge. It's only one car in front of you,
don't you know, don't be a jerk about it, you know,
and just you know, just just be nice to people
(07:09):
will all get along. We'll all get there much more
safely and get there, you know, in a reasonable amount
of time. It's the things that we fight about are
the are the unfair policies that the government is imposing
on us, which which leads to a lot of these
behaviors because people are already frustrated because the government intentionally
is creating traffic congestion unfortunately, and that's going to make
(07:34):
people a lot more angry because they sometimes have to
be somewhere and they can't get there because somebody, you know,
some government official decided it was better for you to
be on a bus, and they want to make your
commuteity a lot more difficult.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Jay, My mother is ninety five, lives in Detroit and
still drives, and she was bragging today about how she drives.
And I said, Mom, if I'm ever in Detroit and
you're on the road, I'm getting off.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
But you know, my mom is ninety one and she
still drives, so I'm thankful I still have her around.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Does she do freeways. I don't think mine does freeways.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
She tries to stay away from some of the higher
speed roadways. And she, you know, at ninety one, she
doesn't drive as far as she used to, but she
you know, she still goes to the grocery store. She
still gets around, as you know, go to her doctor's appointments,
but certainly doesn't take those long trips that we used
to take when I was child, That's for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
What's going on with these bike lanes or these bikes,
you pedal bikes that are in the middle of the road.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, you know, this is an interesting phenomenon. There is
this push to have everybody be on a bicycle, and
there is unfortunately a very militant, small, small, small part
of our population that identifies as bicyclists. They see it
as their identity, and they want everybody to be on
(08:57):
a bicycle, and they want the roadways tore themselves. Now
they'll say, oh, we just want to share the roadway,
but what they want is at least half of the roadway.
And if you look at the amount of people that
use bicycles to get around to commute, it's very small.
It just saw a statistic from the Washington Post and
it said that the percent of US commuters who usually
(09:22):
make a trip by bike commuting is a half a percent.
Now it's bigger in some areas like Manhattan and some
other areas, but overall in the US, it's a half
a percent. It is basically the same in twenty nineteen
as well, you know, before the pandemic, as it is now,
and it's actually down from twenty fourteen. But what they're
(09:47):
doing is they're taking away car lanes in order to
give it over to bike lanes. And my wife and
I have this joke whenever we do see the rare
occasion we see a bicyclist actually in a bike lane,
will say, oh, they're just a unicorns. They're so rare
that we rarely ever received them.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
They say, well, if you build it, they will come. Well, unfortunately,
they have spent billions of dollars around the country building
out bike lanes, and the amount of bicycling has barely moved.
It's barely moved, and it will never reach the amount
that people drive by personal automobile, which is in close
to eighty percent of people get around by personal automobile.
(10:30):
And what's actually increasing, not just because of the pandemic,
because this was happening before the pandemic, is that people
working from home is way way before the pandemic, way
out numbered the people that were traveling around by bicycles.
And so we're never going to get people to switch
to bicycles as a major form of transportation in this country.
(10:53):
And it's a fool's errand and we're making a lot
of people miserable or making a lot of people or
because of it, and it's it's really a bad idea.
And that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be bike lanes
here and there, or there are, there shouldn't be places
for people to bike if they need to, but the
amount of bike lanes that they're putting in in places
(11:14):
in taking away car lanes as a result, is a
very very very poor policy.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
And some of these bikers don't have reflectors or lights
on their bikes, and they're pedaling in the pitch darkness.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yes. In fact, the satistics, the statistics show that the
vast majority of pedestrian and bicyclists collisions and fatality occur
in the dark because people can't see them, can't see them, unfortunately,
I'm sorry, good.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, you're right, you can't see them.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, exactly. And unfortunately there are you know, a set
of bicyclists who don't want to follow the rules of
the road. They don't think the rules of the road
apply to them, so they'll blow through a stop sign,
or you know, they'll blow through a traffic light, or
they'll right on the wrong side of the road or
cut in and out of traffic. Seeing this all the time,
you know, but god forbid a driver in a car
(12:07):
slowly rolls through a stop sign when nobody's around, you know,
they they they lose their minds because of this, and
so they're they're really inconsistent and really hypocritical about this.
So the rules don't apply to them, but you know,
everybody else has to follow the law exactly to the
absolute letter of the law. And again going back to
what we were saying before, no grace for anybody else.
(12:29):
Everybody else is at your but you're perfect. That seems
to be their attitude.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Tell me you hate self driving cars and trucks because
I knew.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, you know, there there are could be some benefits
from that. You know, you're you're you're your mom my mom.
You know, maybe you know, maybe a self driving car
is appropriate for them to get around. But the thing
we're concerned about self driving cars is the amount of
control that the government potentially could have over our lives if,
(12:59):
for ale, they decided to force everybody into a self
driving car in the same way they want to force
everybody into an electric vehicle. And what I mean by
this is that the that no manufacturer will will build
a self driving car that breaks the law. They can't.
It's it's by its very nature, so it's much easier
to control the machine than it is to control the
(13:21):
human being. So all they have to do is pass
some ridiculous law and then everybody, you know, that car
has to follow it. The human being inside that car
will have no control over it, and I don't know.
Let's say, I know, some crazy thing happens, like a pandemic,
and they decide everybody needs to stay home, or nobody
can go to work and nobody can go to a
(13:41):
certain partner.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
To us, they never happen.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
I know they would never happen. But in the case
that it did, if all of our cars were self
driving cars, all they would have to do is pass
that law or pass that rule. Not even a law,
They probably just have to pass the rule and the
car will have to follow it because the manufacturer of
that car that makes the software for that, they will
get in trouble if that car doesn't follow it. So
(14:06):
that's the concern we have is is you know how
much freedom will you have left when that car is
controlled by the government and that car is controlled by
some giant tech company that may not like where you're
going and decides, you know what, we're not going to
take you there in our in our self driving car
because we don't agree with your life choices.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Or we're going to just simply shut the car down
for a week and it won't move exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
And that's another thing that they want to do. They
want they there is in the bipartisan Infrastructure bill that
passed a couple of years ago, there is a mandate
for the government to come up with a plan for
now we call it a kill switch. They you know,
they say it's for impaired driving, but of course it
never stops at what they say that it's for. And
(14:51):
so they want to have this switch in the car
that the car, either automatically or remotely can be shut off.
And think about how dangerous that would be if the
car makes a mistake. I mean, you've been you've been reporting,
you know, over the last day or so on this
CrowdStrike thing that this Microsoft thing, and just I mean
(15:12):
technology is not perfect, okay, so they're always going to
be false positive. So somebody gets in a car and
you know, maybe somebody else is in the car who's
impaired or whatever, and that car won will you will
not be able to go where you need to go
because the car mistakenly thinks that the driver is impaired,
or while your car is driving and you're in the
middle of nowhere, you know, think if you're you know,
(15:32):
a lone woman out there and the car makes a
mistake and now you're stranded somewhere. I mean, this is
really dangerous technology that is not ripe for prime time,
and we're very concerned about the fact that they're mandating
that in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, they're supposed
to have these rules and this technology does not exist
properly yet. Even if it did, it wouldn't be a
(15:53):
good idea. But we're very concerned about this, and we've
been talking to Congress. Is one of the things that
the National Motor Association does is we do talk to
elected officials a lot, and we try to convince them
and explain to them what the problems are for some
of these ideas that sound good on paper, but when
you get into the details of it, they're not a
good idea, and there are oftentimes very
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Dangerous Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight
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Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Jay that is going too slow on the freeway is dangerous.
What about going way too fast?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Well, you know our freeways, the controlled access highways. The
US interstate highway system is actually built on the same
model as the German autobonds. So if you're a fairly
competent driver and you're not weaving in and out of traffic,
you can go reasonable speed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I mean, look at.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
The speed limits around the country. In Utah, the same
highway is eighty miles an hour as a speed limit,
and in other parts of the country the exact same
design of a highway is sometimes fifty five miles an
hour or fifty or sixty miles an hour. So the
speed limits on our highways are pretty arbitrary with regards
to the jurisdiction that you're driving through. And so what
(00:58):
we recommend in terms of how we set speed limits
is something called the eighty fifth percentile speed. That's the
speed that eighty five percent of the people don't exceed.
It's the natural speed that everybody sort of congregates on
the roadway. So the most dangerous thing actually is speed
variation that is, some people going much faster, some people
going much slower. But if everybody's going about the same speed,
(01:21):
that's been proven to be the most safe thing, even
if that's a little faster than say what somebody arbitrarily
stuck a speed limit on that particular roadway.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
For There's nothing worse though than a driver doing forty
on the freeway right exactly.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, And it's even worse if they're stuck in the
left lane and refuse to move over. The National Motors
Association one of the things we do in most years
is we have what we call Lane Courtesy Month, and
we try to encourage people, you know, stay to the right,
pass left, and leave that left lane open for the
(01:58):
people that want to drive a reasonable speed on the roadway.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Now, some states have a high speed lane, but you
have to have more than one person in the car.
Is that happening throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, Well, what they're doing is they have they have
carpool lanes that has been proven not to be very successful.
But what they're starting to do now is they're starting
to have these lanes in which you have to pay
to be in those lanes. There's nothing wrong with building
a lane in which you have to pay for. If
that's an extra lane. The problem would be is if
(02:32):
they took away a lane that we've already paid for
with our tax dollars and then made that uh and
a lane in which you had to pay for. So
so it depends on whether or not you know how
how you built the lane, and how you how you've
used that money, and whether you've used new money for
that and added to capacity. But what we're seeing around
the country is what they really want to do is
(02:54):
they want to reduce capacity to have this thing called
road diets. And I don't if anybody's heard that before,
but what that basically means is they want to take
away car lanes because there's too much car lane you're going,
you know, it's too easy for you to get around,
So they want to take away car lanes. And this
is happening in a lot of cities. Los Angeles and
New York City has done this, you know, a lot
(03:15):
of major cities and sometimes in smaller places around the country,
and it can lead to some very very dangerous things
that have happened. You probably have covered on your show
the fire up in Paradise, California, when that happened. And
one of the things that happened there A lot of
people don't know this is that they did a road
(03:36):
diet in the middle of town on that roadway, after
they were told that the route out of town was
already not safe. What they did was they took away
a car lane and a number of people I think
it was eighty somewhi people lost their lives in that,
and part of that was because people couldn't get out
and you know, in an area, in a mountainous area
(03:57):
where there was only one route out and they took
a car lane. And unfortunately, that's what some of this
ideology leads to, leads to things that are much less safe,
not more safe.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Jade, does your organization ever look at road rage?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
You know, it is something that we don't spend a
lot of time on, but it is it's an interesting question.
A lot of what's happening with road rage nowadays, I
think is people are very frustrated by the policies that
are making their commutes and their ability to get around
much more difficult. So they're stuck in traffic for no reason.
(04:33):
They're frustrated by that. But of course we certainly can't
condone anybody doing anything dangerous on the roadway or being
unsafe to other people on the roadway. We think people
need to be courteous. That's why we promote the lane
courtesy and you know, people need to get along and
you know, but people also need to be courteous. So
(04:55):
you know, if somebody wants to go a little faster,
then you get out of their way, don't don't try
to block them in intentionally.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And I'm convinced road rage occurs when a bad driver
or in consider a driver does something to a person
who's having a bad day.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely what leads to this kind
of thing. I mean, certainly, I think just everything in
our society now is a little bit too close to
the boiling point. So we really knew need to kind
of take a step back just overall. But we tend to,
and this is more of a psychological thing, that we
(05:32):
tend to ascribe bad motives to people when that may
not be their intention. You know that guy cut me off, Well,
maybe he just didn't see you, or he wasn't paying attention,
or he's having a bad day.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Or he made a mistake.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
A little bit of grace. Yeah, maybe just made a mistake,
you know, I you know, I accidentally, you know, a
couple of weeks ago, I actually made a mistake and
and you know, unfortunately I didn't quite cut somebody off,
but somebody got mad at something that I did on
the roadway and they, you know, they came after me
and driving like a maniac. That's not going to get
you anywhere. That's not going to help you. You're going
(06:05):
to hurt somebody. Don't do that, you know, just just
let it go and and and don't be you know,
don't don't don't put more people in danger because you know,
you you you know, you can't just sort of say, well,
you know, maybe that person's having a bad day, or
maybe that person just made a mistake. They weren't intending
it towards me. Everybody takes things a little too personally
these days, and we need to we need to have
(06:27):
a little bit more grace to people.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I think I tried to go out of my way
to help people. Somebody's trying to cut into traffic and
they're stuck on the side, I'll slow down, let them
go in. Or somebody do this where they put their
turn signal on to change lanes. Nobody lets them in.
I'll let them in.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, I do the same thing because you know what,
here's the thing. I want to treat people the way
I would like to be treated on the roadway. That's
one of the things that we promote in our organization
is this sort of the golden rule, and you know,
treat people the way you want to be treated on
the roadway. Be courteous. If somebody's trying to merge, let
them merge. It's only one car in front of you,
don't you know, don't be a jerk about it, you know,
and just you know, just just be nice to people
(07:09):
will all get along. We'll all get there much more
safely and get there, you know, in a reasonable amount
of time. It's the things that we fight about are
the are the unfair policies that the government is imposing
on us, which which leads to a lot of these
behaviors because people are already frustrated because the government intentionally
is creating traffic congestion unfortunately, and that's going to make
(07:34):
people a lot more angry because they sometimes have to
be somewhere and they can't get there because somebody, you know,
some government official decided it was better for you to
be on a bus, and they want to make your
commuteity a lot more difficult.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Jay, My mother is ninety five, lives in Detroit and
still drives, and she was bragging today about how she drives.
And I said, Mom, if I'm ever in Detroit and
you're on the road, I'm getting off.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
But you know, my mom is ninety one and she
still drives, so I'm thankful I still have her around.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Does she do freeways. I don't think mine does freeways.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
She tries to stay away from some of the higher
speed roadways. And she, you know, at ninety one, she
doesn't drive as far as she used to, but she
you know, she still goes to the grocery store. She
still gets around, as you know, go to her doctor's appointments,
but certainly doesn't take those long trips that we used
to take when I was child, That's for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
What's going on with these bike lanes or these bikes,
you pedal bikes that are in the middle of the road.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, you know, this is an interesting phenomenon. There is
this push to have everybody be on a bicycle, and
there is unfortunately a very militant, small, small, small part
of our population that identifies as bicyclists. They see it
as their identity, and they want everybody to be on
(08:57):
a bicycle, and they want the roadways tore themselves. Now
they'll say, oh, we just want to share the roadway,
but what they want is at least half of the roadway.
And if you look at the amount of people that
use bicycles to get around to commute, it's very small.
It just saw a statistic from the Washington Post and
it said that the percent of US commuters who usually
(09:22):
make a trip by bike commuting is a half a percent.
Now it's bigger in some areas like Manhattan and some
other areas, but overall in the US, it's a half
a percent. It is basically the same in twenty nineteen
as well, you know, before the pandemic, as it is now,
and it's actually down from twenty fourteen. But what they're
(09:47):
doing is they're taking away car lanes in order to
give it over to bike lanes. And my wife and
I have this joke whenever we do see the rare
occasion we see a bicyclist actually in a bike lane,
will say, oh, they're just a unicorns. They're so rare
that we rarely ever received them.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
They say, well, if you build it, they will come. Well, unfortunately,
they have spent billions of dollars around the country building
out bike lanes, and the amount of bicycling has barely moved.
It's barely moved, and it will never reach the amount
that people drive by personal automobile, which is in close
to eighty percent of people get around by personal automobile.
(10:30):
And what's actually increasing, not just because of the pandemic,
because this was happening before the pandemic, is that people
working from home is way way before the pandemic, way
out numbered the people that were traveling around by bicycles.
And so we're never going to get people to switch
to bicycles as a major form of transportation in this country.
(10:53):
And it's a fool's errand and we're making a lot
of people miserable or making a lot of people or
because of it, and it's it's really a bad idea.
And that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be bike lanes
here and there, or there are, there shouldn't be places
for people to bike if they need to, but the
amount of bike lanes that they're putting in in places
(11:14):
in taking away car lanes as a result, is a
very very very poor policy.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
And some of these bikers don't have reflectors or lights
on their bikes, and they're pedaling in the pitch darkness.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yes. In fact, the satistics, the statistics show that the
vast majority of pedestrian and bicyclists collisions and fatality occur
in the dark because people can't see them, can't see them, unfortunately,
I'm sorry, good.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
No, you're right, you can't see them.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, exactly. And unfortunately there are you know, a set
of bicyclists who don't want to follow the rules of
the road. They don't think the rules of the road
apply to them, so they'll blow through a stop sign,
or you know, they'll blow through a traffic light, or
they'll right on the wrong side of the road or
cut in and out of traffic. Seeing this all the time,
you know, but god forbid a driver in a car
(12:07):
slowly rolls through a stop sign when nobody's around, you know,
they they they lose their minds because of this, and
so they're they're really inconsistent and really hypocritical about this.
So the rules don't apply to them, but you know,
everybody else has to follow the law exactly to the
absolute letter of the law. And again going back to
what we were saying before, no grace for anybody else.
(12:29):
Everybody else is at your but you're perfect. That seems
to be their attitude.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Tell me you hate self driving cars and trucks because
I knew.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, you know, there there are could be some benefits
from that. You know, you're you're you're your mom my mom.
You know, maybe you know, maybe a self driving car
is appropriate for them to get around. But the thing
we're concerned about self driving cars is the amount of
control that the government potentially could have over our lives if,
(12:59):
for ale, they decided to force everybody into a self
driving car in the same way they want to force
everybody into an electric vehicle. And what I mean by
this is that the that no manufacturer will will build
a self driving car that breaks the law. They can't.
It's it's by its very nature, so it's much easier
to control the machine than it is to control the
(13:21):
human being. So all they have to do is pass
some ridiculous law and then everybody, you know, that car
has to follow it. The human being inside that car
will have no control over it, and I don't know.
Let's say, I know, some crazy thing happens, like a pandemic,
and they decide everybody needs to stay home, or nobody
can go to work and nobody can go to a
(13:41):
certain partner.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
To us, they never happen.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
I know they would never happen. But in the case
that it did, if all of our cars were self
driving cars, all they would have to do is pass
that law or pass that rule. Not even a law,
They probably just have to pass the rule and the
car will have to follow it because the manufacturer of
that car that makes the software for that, they will
get in trouble if that car doesn't follow it. So
(14:06):
that's the concern we have is is you know how
much freedom will you have left when that car is
controlled by the government and that car is controlled by
some giant tech company that may not like where you're
going and decides, you know what, we're not going to
take you there in our in our self driving car
because we don't agree with your life choices.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Or we're going to just simply shut the car down
for a week and it won't move exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
And that's another thing that they want to do. They
want they there is in the bipartisan Infrastructure bill that
passed a couple of years ago, there is a mandate
for the government to come up with a plan for
now we call it a kill switch. They you know,
they say it's for impaired driving, but of course it
never stops at what they say that it's for. And
(14:51):
so they want to have this switch in the car
that the car, either automatically or remotely can be shut off.
And think about how dangerous that would be if the
car makes a mistake. I mean, you've been you've been reporting,
you know, over the last day or so on this
CrowdStrike thing that this Microsoft thing, and just I mean
(15:12):
technology is not perfect, okay, so they're always going to
be false positive. So somebody gets in a car and
you know, maybe somebody else is in the car who's
impaired or whatever, and that car won will you will
not be able to go where you need to go
because the car mistakenly thinks that the driver is impaired,
or while your car is driving and you're in the
middle of nowhere, you know, think if you're you know,
(15:32):
a lone woman out there and the car makes a
mistake and now you're stranded somewhere. I mean, this is
really dangerous technology that is not ripe for prime time,
and we're very concerned about the fact that they're mandating
that in twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, they're supposed
to have these rules and this technology does not exist
properly yet. Even if it did, it wouldn't be a
(15:53):
good idea. But we're very concerned about this, and we've
been talking to Congress. Is one of the things that
the National Motor Association does is we do talk to
elected officials a lot, and we try to convince them
and explain to them what the problems are for some
of these ideas that sound good on paper, but when
you get into the details of it, they're not a
good idea, and there are oftentimes very
Speaker 1 (16:13):
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