To base the initial premise on the lethality of regulated versus deregulated autobahn usage in the 1930s is a bridge way too far as subsequent studies have found that deregulated car usage is far less dangerous than regulated from the simple understanding (particularly evident in the German psyche) that people will follow regulations mindlessly, even into life threatening situations, simply because they are in the right (regulation wise). People will pay far more attention to their situations if they feel they are in an undefined (regulations again) condition where they need to look out for themselves. Check out SE Asian (unregulated) round abouts – look like utter chaos but few accidents occur.
Very well observed. I read this on another website: Pilots have a lot of procedures they have to follow (of course) but are rightly told that “in extreme circumstances the Captain should disregard any of these procedures and do whatever he or she considers necessary to ensure the safe conduct of the flight”. The website goes on to say: “The worst case of mindless adherence to procedure was the Grenfell Tower fire where the Fire Brigade bosses stuck slavishly to the “stay put” policy”.
Steve Gwynne
3 years ago
Taking life into one’s own hands 😊
Travelling in Asia made me realise the deeply embedded safetyism of Europe. Definitely more exhilarating to be allowed to align body, mind and soul even if it incorporates greater risk.
The difference between sticking one’s head out of a railway carriage window and feeling LIFE and imprisoned in the ultra safetyism of an air conditioned box 😊.
repper
3 years ago
I was fortunate enough to stumble across Robert Pirsig’s book when I was 19 – it set me up for a life of engaged self-responsibility and practical physicality. I did become a middle-class professional for a while but it was an awful existence compared to a life of practical self-reliant autonomy.
“God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved.”
vijning
3 years ago
This reminds me of the Marxist dream. When the workers would be finally free (workings of society totally automated) They would enjoy and make art, think and make science progress, all things good and well, etc. But by removing our hands from the world (no more work, no more driving) man loses touch (emotionally and spiritually) with the world. The thrill and satisfaction of working and driving, etc, gone; what thrills will we still be able to feel? We have to keep our hands on the world, even if our technology relieves us from it, To keep our heads on the world.
Karl Juhnke
3 years ago
This cotton wooling of society to take away risk has been slowly strangling individuals, business and society for over 30 years here in Aus, coinciding with the attacks on masculinity etc. Suddenly the people were no longer able to handle life’s ups and down and needed to refer to experts. This coinciding with elite overproduction and the loss of traditional blue collar jobs. When you pump out so many experts, you need to keep them busy and paid. In the 1950s my uncle left northern NSW at the age of 15 and hitched to Melbourne and made a life for himself. In the late 70s aged 12 I would come home from school on a Friday and tell Mum I would be back Sunday after roaming the bush with my mates or sometimes alone with my dog. Then the rot slowly set in.
mike otter
3 years ago
Each time the anti-freedom hive mind control freak crowd asserts itself bad things happen: be it in social policy on culture or the family ( see Myron Magnet ) or even the regulation of driving. This afflicts left and right political movements and the article and Crawford’s work well reflect this. However the question has a logical as well as ethical angle: Those seeking to control all risk do not have a system to plan and analyse their ideas before execution. With regard to road travel and other areas of social control 1) there are too many factors for even a concept quantum computer to accurately predict outcomes, and 2) no-one except a fool or Neil Ferguson claims they can predict the future. (“All maths models are wronf but some are more useful than others) Perhaps those hoping to micromanage our huge modern societies should confine their thinking to making sure that we don’t repeat what we know went wrong last time? At least then they’d make their own mistakes as well as successes and so balance the need for some controls with the desire for maximum freedom…
I’m afraid the author rather lost me at the opening paragraph: to describe smart motorways as “making [drivers’] agency redundant” is plainly hyperbolic to the point of absurdity.
Go Away Please
3 years ago
Many thanks for this interesting read. I knew there was something about driver-less cars I really, really don’t like and it is precisely this. The loss of agency and the ability to use certain acquired skills. I mostly use mental skills in my day to day life and so driving, which is using my body and mind in a different way, is entirely satisfying …. what Crawford describes as a sort of freedom. I like that. I’ve found this whole Covid period increasingly dystopian …. as though every inch of my life is being managed for me. I am at a loss to understand those that have taken to the lockdown so easily and have actually asked for more of it.
All of the covid19 is only to avoid the risk of dying unexpectedly. To that goal, math is /was constructed as well as software; based on the outcomes of these ‘rational’ decision methods, behaviour of humans is forced into the required way according math formulas to get the good outcomes.
David Uzzaman
3 years ago
I like Mr Crawford derive satisfaction from making and mending things. Modern society is increasingly set up so that a few technically trained people are expected to do all the fixing leaving the rest of us a passive consumers. However somewhere at the back of our collective brains we know that we are the apes who learned to use tools to shape our world.
Jonathan Oldbuck
3 years ago
The influence of Hegel and Heidegger is enormous. All pushback against the dominance of instrumental reason/rationality usually starts with them, knowingly or not.
jdcharlwood
3 years ago
If everyone is so intent on their own agency and risk why not take public transport when you need to and ride a dirt bike when you want to. That satisfies the green agenda (and surely fewer cars is a good thing) and the desire to be free.
To base the initial premise on the lethality of regulated versus deregulated autobahn usage in the 1930s is a bridge way too far as subsequent studies have found that deregulated car usage is far less dangerous than regulated from the simple understanding (particularly evident in the German psyche) that people will follow regulations mindlessly, even into life threatening situations, simply because they are in the right (regulation wise). People will pay far more attention to their situations if they feel they are in an undefined (regulations again) condition where they need to look out for themselves. Check out SE Asian (unregulated) round abouts – look like utter chaos but few accidents occur.
Very well observed.
I read this on another website:
Pilots have a lot of procedures they have to follow (of course) but are rightly told that “in extreme circumstances the Captain should disregard any of these procedures and do whatever he or she considers necessary to ensure the safe conduct of the flight”.
The website goes on to say: “The worst case of mindless adherence to procedure was the Grenfell Tower fire where the Fire Brigade bosses stuck slavishly to the “stay put” policy”.
Taking life into one’s own hands 😊
Travelling in Asia made me realise the deeply embedded safetyism of Europe. Definitely more exhilarating to be allowed to align body, mind and soul even if it incorporates greater risk.
The difference between sticking one’s head out of a railway carriage window and feeling LIFE and imprisoned in the ultra safetyism of an air conditioned box 😊.
I was fortunate enough to stumble across Robert Pirsig’s book when I was 19 – it set me up for a life of engaged self-responsibility and practical physicality. I did become a middle-class professional for a while but it was an awful existence compared to a life of practical self-reliant autonomy.
“God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved.”
This reminds me of the Marxist dream.
When the workers would be finally free (workings of society totally automated)
They would enjoy and make art, think and make science progress, all things good and well, etc.
But by removing our hands from the world
(no more work, no more driving) man loses touch (emotionally and spiritually) with the world. The thrill and satisfaction of working and driving, etc, gone; what thrills will we still be able to feel?
We have to keep our hands on the world, even if our technology relieves us from it,
To keep our heads on the world.
This cotton wooling of society to take away risk has been slowly strangling individuals, business and society for over 30 years here in Aus, coinciding with the attacks on masculinity etc.
Suddenly the people were no longer able to handle life’s ups and down and needed to refer to experts. This coinciding with elite overproduction and the loss of traditional blue collar jobs. When you pump out so many experts, you need to keep them busy and paid.
In the 1950s my uncle left northern NSW at the age of 15 and hitched to Melbourne and made a life for himself. In the late 70s aged 12 I would come home from school on a Friday and tell Mum I would be back Sunday after roaming the bush with my mates or sometimes alone with my dog.
Then the rot slowly set in.
Each time the anti-freedom hive mind control freak crowd asserts itself bad things happen: be it in social policy on culture or the family ( see Myron Magnet ) or even the regulation of driving. This afflicts left and right political movements and the article and Crawford’s work well reflect this. However the question has a logical as well as ethical angle: Those seeking to control all risk do not have a system to plan and analyse their ideas before execution. With regard to road travel and other areas of social control 1) there are too many factors for even a concept quantum computer to accurately predict outcomes, and 2) no-one except a fool or Neil Ferguson claims they can predict the future. (“All maths models are wronf but some are more useful than others) Perhaps those hoping to micromanage our huge modern societies should confine their thinking to making sure that we don’t repeat what we know went wrong last time? At least then they’d make their own mistakes as well as successes and so balance the need for some controls with the desire for maximum freedom…
Well said.
I’m afraid the author rather lost me at the opening paragraph: to describe smart motorways as “making [drivers’] agency redundant” is plainly hyperbolic to the point of absurdity.
Many thanks for this interesting read. I knew there was something about driver-less cars I really, really don’t like and it is precisely this. The loss of agency and the ability to use certain acquired skills. I mostly use mental skills in my day to day life and so driving, which is using my body and mind in a different way, is entirely satisfying …. what Crawford describes as a sort of freedom. I like that.
I’ve found this whole Covid period increasingly dystopian …. as though every inch of my life is being managed for me. I am at a loss to understand those that have taken to the lockdown so easily and have actually asked for more of it.
All of the covid19 is only to avoid the risk of dying unexpectedly. To that goal, math is /was constructed as well as software; based on the outcomes of these ‘rational’ decision methods, behaviour of humans is forced into the required way according math formulas to get the good outcomes.
I like Mr Crawford derive satisfaction from making and mending things. Modern society is increasingly set up so that a few technically trained people are expected to do all the fixing leaving the rest of us a passive consumers. However somewhere at the back of our collective brains we know that we are the apes who learned to use tools to shape our world.
The influence of Hegel and Heidegger is enormous. All pushback against the dominance of instrumental reason/rationality usually starts with them, knowingly or not.
If everyone is so intent on their own agency and risk why not take public transport when you need to and ride a dirt bike when you want to. That satisfies the green agenda (and surely fewer cars is a good thing) and the desire to be free.
It’s all about the insurance industry