07-03-2017, 10:43 PM
(07-03-2017, 11:41 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:(06-29-2017, 08:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: GPS is a poor substitute for thinking. Maybe not as bad as watching FoX Propaganda Channel, but pretty bad, on the whole.The one thing that my Google maps app on my smartphone does that maps don't is provide real time traffic information. I will be driving up from the DC area to Northern New Jersey Saturday afternoon and I'll be darned if I don't let Google guide me. Google has gotten me diverted from some horrible traffic before
Being diverted from a traffic jam is a legitimate objective. The right route through an urban area can change dramatically if someone does something stupid, like cutting off an eighteen-wheeler whose driver must panic to avoid an obvious accident. To avoid a rear-end collision the trucker jack-knifes, only to make things even worse. Even for that I can see a solution in drivers' training.
But in the meantime, real-time reporting of traffic backups from any cause are a legitimate cause for changing course.
I had an incident this summer in which somebody did something stupid on I-71/75 south of Cincinnati. Had we known we might have taken a different route into Cincinnati and shaved about 45 minutes of stressful driving off our route. As my brother and I inched our way through a traffic snarl I saw a tipped-over RV at the end of the travail. I don't know who was at fault for the accident, as that was for Kentucky state troopers to figure out after the traffic cleared.
With real-time warning of traffic backups from all causes we would have changed our route. An alternative was obvious had we known. But Cincinnati is not a giant metro area as Greater Washington DC is, let alone Philadelphia. Or in my more usual experience, Greater Chicago, Detroit, or Indianapolis.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.