I don’t, how’s that for a short answer?
Mind you, this is coming from a huge science-fiction movie nerd and robot fan, so theoretically, I should love the whole car-drives-itself thing, an SF standard since forever. And I do love the way Will Smith’s Audi stows its wheel in I, Robot, which is where I grabbed the frames for the topshot GIF. (Notably, that GIF is reversed, because while the Fresh Prince does trust his Audi to self-drive while he naps, he does not trust it to do the right thing when he’s about to get piled on by a bunch of Fruitiger Aerobots.)
I’m also a big fan of GM’s 1956 vision for self-driving technology as seen below, wherein a family of four is seen cruising effortlessly beneath the bubble top of a wheeled Wally Wood spaceship (which you may recognise as GM’s Firebird II concept) in the wondrous future of 1976.
And of course, I love Johnny Cab, because who doesn’t. Jonathan Entertainment Cabriolet is an interesting example, because he kind of gets at why I don’t see myself ever wanting a “full self-driving” car. Adaptive cruise control? Automatic braking? Yes, I’ll have those, but door-to-door from city to highway and back under computer control is a pass for me – even in a world where the machine’s infallibility can be taken for granted in exactly the same way that none of us ever wonders if a calculator did the math right.
You see, I would just be too uncomfortable sitting right there behind the wheel (or the space where it used to be, if I’m in Will’s Audi) as the car drives itself. I may have total confidence in the car’s ability to get me from A to B safely, but I would certainly be judging it. “Why are you changing lanes?” “Why aren’t we in the left lane?” “I wouldn’t turn here.” Etc. My head would be pounding. Just let me drive. (Assuming I can drive – make no mistake, I would appreciate being able to tell the car “take me to the hospital, I’m having a heart attack,” or “take me home, I overdid it on the Mai Tais,” and the safety benefits of that capability cannot be overstated.)
Strangely, I would be unbothered if I were on a bus that was self-driving (again, assuming take-it-for-granted safety of the system). Because who pays attention to the driving of a bus? Just let me know when I’m at my stop. But I can’t tune out like that in a car, where I’m constantly confronted by the fact that no one is driving, like the recurring nightmare I frequently had as a kid (feel free to psychoanalyze me in the comments). Sitting in the passenger seat while the car self-drives would be even worse. Know what would help? Put Johnny Cab in the driver’s seat. Even though he’s hilariously fake and doesn’t even pretend to hold a steering wheel (or have arms), someone is driving. I need that.
You tell us: Do You Actually Want Your Car To Drive Itself?
Topshot GIF: I, Robot/20th Century Fox
Yeah, I’ll pass. Self-driving cars are a consumerist non-solution to the car-centric infrastructure problem. Give us the goddamn trains!
Hear, hear!
Trains are fine if you live near a stop and your destination(s) are also near stops and you are not carrying much.
Otherwise you’ll need a car.
Branch lines, cargo bikes, and local street cars.
All of these solutions exist and have been functioning in other countries (including the US in prior centuries!) with fantastic efficiency of both energy and cost.
The solution is possible, cars are not the answer.
As someone who bikes most local errands and loved to commute by bus and train when it was an option I want to agree with you. However I find it is also efficient to combine multiple trips in a car, especially if flexibility is required. For example if one of those shopping stops does not have important items but there is another store a few miles away that does. Or if the school calls and little Johnny is being sent home unexpectedly. Or your job demands irregular hours that does not match a transit schedule well. Or you just dislike cities with their tiny, crappy, expensive apartments, noise, filth, crowds and overpriced stores and prefer a simpler, quieter suburban/rural life.
Cars also make it easier to bring home a fancy discarded office chair. I have found several unexpected goodies on the sidewalk with a “FREE” sign on them I was able to just throw in the back of my microvan that would have been impossible to bring home on a bike.
Now a useful car does NOT need to be a smog belching, pedestrian crushing, multiple parking space hogging 900 hp 9 mpg compensating for something behemoth. A 120+ MPGe/60+ MPG compact REXEV or PHEV should do the job just fine, including long trips for most families of four or less.
Hear! Hear!
The solution isn’t to do whatever we have to do to make the car-centric infrastructure system work, it’s to change the infrastructure system to one that works better.
It’s fine to drive, cars are a valid form of transportation, our infrastructure problem is that we’ve built everything around them, negating all other forms of transportation in their favor. Cars are one of the many answers to the complex matter of transportation, and it’s lamentable that they’ve been centered as the only solution.
I live in the city, there are many businesses within walking distance, but I can’t really walk to any of them because there aren’t any sidewalks. I could technically walk on the curb, but who would? It’s easier, safer and more comfortable to drive, but only because walking is actively discouraged. I’ve lived in walkable cities, and they make driving better. With fewer people driving, there’s less traffic, and when there is, I can take the subway to my destination. It’s faster, less stressful and cheaper.
I love my car, I love driving it, but it’s frustrating that I have to fire it up, drive it across the street, and turn it off before the engine is warmed up for a 2-minute trip somewhere I could’ve leisurely walked in the same time if I’d had sidewalks.
I don’t want cars out of my city, I just want alternatives available, and self-driving cars are just lights and mirrors to misdirect us away from that.
So what’s stopping you from biking? Or using an electric scooter/motorcycle?
I’m not saying it’s impossible to go places without a car in a car-centric city, it’s just inconvenient, uncomfortable and unsafe in a way that it doesn’t have to be.
We don’t have bike lanes or bike racks here either, and 2-wheeled vehicles aren’t as nice as walking. Donning and doffing a helmet is about as inconvenient as buckling in and out of a car, you can’t safely bike side by side with a friend, and bikes need to be left somewhere when you go inside. I can’t bike while carrying grocery bags or chatting with my wife. I could buy a luggage rack, or a second bike, or a tandem bike, but those are all half-solutions that requires me to buy and keep more stuff.
It feels a bit disingenuous when you ask me why I don’t inconvenience and endanger myself just to avoid using the infrastructure around me as it’s designed to be used.
I live in a society, and wanting that society to be a bit better doesn’t mean I have to hate it. Nor does participating in that society make me a hypocrite. I need to drive places in order to have my necessities met, and I will continue doing so because it’s the easiest and safest thing to do in the city I live in. If I had safe, convenient alternatives, I’d use them whenever they were safer and more convenient. And that’s the whole point of a society, safety and convenience for everyone.
“It feels a bit disingenuous when you ask me why I don’t inconvenience and endanger myself just to avoid using the infrastructure around me as it’s designed to be used.”
I asked what’s stopping you from biking. I don’t know your city. As such I have no way to gauge how unbikable or unwalkable your city is for myself. I do know that reasons for not walking do not necessarily apply to biking.
“I can’t bike while carrying grocery bags or chatting with my wife. I could buy a luggage rack, or a second bike, or a tandem bike, but those are all half-solutions that requires me to buy and keep more stuff.”
Dude, a used rear luggage rack can be had on CL for $0-$10, a low rider front rack for a bit more. Once they are on the bike they take up no more room than the bike itself. They can also protect the bike from damage.
Paneers and saddlebags to fit those racks are about $20-$40 a pair. Saddlebags are semi permanent attachments but paneers clip on and can be used as water resistant, covered shopping bags. There are even backpacks that convert into clip on paneers. And all those things once on the bike don’t take up much more room than the bike itself. If you already have a bike these things add very little cost and require very little space.
And you can get a LOT of stuff in them. They are designed for bike packing tours lasting hundreds or even thousands of miles after all.
Pro tip: Kiddie trailers can also be used as a shopping carts.
“2-wheeled vehicles aren’t as nice as walking”
They are considerably faster though. For short trips of 1-2 miles sometimes as fast as using a car.
“bikes need to be left somewhere when you go inside”
I find shopping cart cages work well to lock a bike to. Really any tree or pole can work. And if you look you may find eye hooks protruding from the walls which can be used.
That’s assuming the business doesn’t let you bring your bike inside.
I see your point. Unfortunately, most unwalkable cities are also unbikeable. Even if my area was walkable and bikeable, I’d still be rallying to bring those options to other people who don’t have them. There are many ways to equip a bicycle to make it more practical, but all of them still require bicycle ownership and residence in a bikeable area. My grandmother, who lives in a walkable city, only has a car for the occasional trip out of town, and walks everywhere else. She couldn’t bike if she wanted or needed to, because she can’t afford to fall off at her age. bicycles are great, but they can’t exist as a binary alternative to the car, especially since they’re not even an option in many areas.
More importantly, it’s not about me or my city specifically, it’s about everybody in all cities. The majority of American urban and suburban areas could be walkable with minimal effort, could be bikeable and many could even have public transportation networks, but don’t. And I think they should, wherever possible. It may not benefit everyone directly, but it’d benefit most people, including drivers, who would have fewer vehicles to share the road with.
I guess my point is, I’m not trying to solve MY problem, I want this issue to be solved for everyone’s benefit.
Well I live in California and I bike so there are a few bright spots in the US. It may be worth visiting your city council meetings and getting vocal about your desires. For all you know they maybe looking for just such feedback to act.
While I would appreciate the ability to free up both hands for a larger and more creative repertoire of obscene gestures while on the road, I would have little faith in the ability of a self-driving car to outrun the other drivers after performing them. It’s a conundrum.
no.
10 years ago as a regular drinker- Fuck yeah!
Sober sally who gets his thrills driving? – Fuck no!
This actually raise an interesting point I’d never considered.
At some point if self-driving cars become “responsible” enough to take over some level of the decision making behind the wheel, what happens to DWI laws?
If a car is handling 51% of the driving, is that enough to let a drunk behind the wheel? 80%? 99%?
Tough question without a good answer IMO.
It’s easy to say 100% and leave it at that, especially since drunk drivers aren’t sympathetic, but I think the question fascinating and deserves some nuanced discussion about what actually benefits society the most.
In the sci-fi novel “The Human Division”, John Scalzi had a podcaster/journalist character who was required to have his car set to full self-driving at all times due to having gotten a DUI. It wasn’t a major plot point at all and served only to show that the guy was a horse’s ass, but it kind of stuck with me.
Would’ve been a cool plot point/foreshadowing payoff if he needed to make some emergency maneuvers and the car didn’t let him.
There is one scenario I have thought of that I would like to have a self-driving vehicle. Every year we take a long road trip to visit family and haul a bunch of stuff along with us. On one of those trips I thought about how it would be great if I could send the van by itself full of the stuff and take a smaller, more comfortable vehicle to drive the humans there. Not very environmentally friendly to send two vehicles but it would make the trip more enjoyable.
Could I interest you in my new invention, it’s like a small box van, but you tow it behind your car. ????
Forgot you can’t do emojis. There was a 😉 at the end to clarify the lighthearted intention.
Ha! Still not the driving dynamics I quite had in mind but certainly an option.
Really? Just me?
You see, I want to drive a car for fun. Most of the time, I want to be taken somewhere. Now, the best option would be if there was, say, some magical system where I pay a small fee to get on a form of transportation that everyone can use. Maybe an interconnected system that has set lines, with easy connections and quick transfers to make it that you can go anywhere in the city with ease – but you don’t have to have individual vehicles, so that we can reduce costs and increase efficiency. You might even put them on fixed rails underground so that they don’t interfere with surface traffic. Please give me 30 billion in venture capital to make my idea of “subsurface ways” work.
Yes, as long as every other car was also autonomous and had properly enforced safety standards. No half-measures, not post-capitalist hellscape cryptobros claiming full autonomy when my cat could do better.
?Toonces!?!
LOOK OUT!
I’m already convinced my cars are eagerly looking for ways to kill me the moment I let my guard down. They don’t need my cat’s help.
And vice versa.
Selectable? There are times I would make use of it. Mandatory, like a car with no steering wheel? Zero interest. I would prefer to handle much of my driving myself. My DD is a manual and the cruise control isn’t even working right now, so I’m fully invested in the physical act of driving right now, even if I didn’t want to be. I’ll probably stay that way for some time to come.
I want to drive if the car is a manual, and the route is not my daily commute. I’ll keep commuting by bike.
I’ll drive a manual as long as is reasonable, but sooner or later, it’s going to be too much work or money to get/maintain a manual for daily use. At which point I probably want an electric car that drives itself.
I very much understand the thought process here, as I feel similarly. I want a car to be a manual, and if it is not it may as well be a very efficient, useful EV because if there is no stick I simply do not care. I will take a stick shift car over anything, every day, and then I really enjoy driving. If it doesn’t have that I am just not engaged enough, so just make the thing work
I’ve already accepted that I’ll go from 3-pedal driving to 1-pedal driving some day, hopefully after we figure out how to make a 200-mile, sub-3000lb electric compact. A couple more generations of battery tech should do it, and I should be able to keep my car running reliably until then.
The VW eGolf has a solid 1-pedal driving experience. There’s a lot of driver engagement but it’s also so intuitive there isn’t much to do.
It’s 1000lbs heavier than you’d like and has half the range though…
I’ve heard many good things about the E-Golf. Right now, the E-Cooper looks like the best offering to me, but my car is going strong, so I shouldn’t have yo go EV-shopping for a long time.
Yes, my drive to work is 18 miles on the highway, 10 on city/rural driving. Those 18 miles would be amazing if the car takes control and I just read the autopian lol
The problem for this to work properly, a lot of vehicles need to have this technology available for everything work smoothly. If there is a Nissan Altima driving like crazy, it will put all the automation at risk.
Now remember, Altimas don’t kill people, it’s the credit-deprived, life-full-of-poor-decisions idiots driving them who do.
If my car was driving itself I wouldn’t be sitting there staring at the road, I’d be reading a book or watching a movie or playing a game on a handheld. Like, when I’m in a bus or an uber I’m not laser focused on what the driver is doing, I’m doing something else (and I am a nervous passenger – I have to be doing something else or I’ll be convinced we’re gonna hit something). Don’t see how a self-driving car that was actually safe would be any different.
And while I wouldn’t want my car to drive itself when I’m cruising through the white mountains enjoying the view, sitting on a flat freeway or driving on the same roads over and over in the 20 mile radius from my house, yest please.
Yes, I would, in certain circumstances. I’ve mentioned before but I drive a 12 year old car with a manual transmission so no fancy ADAS stuff in my car. But I have now for work rented a handful of cars with fantastic adaptive cruise and lane following that if I were to ever get a car with an automatic, it would be absolutely imperative that the vehicle in question have great ACC and lane following. Long road trips and rush hour slogs are infinitely more tolerable with this tech.
Full 100% autonomy a la Robotaxi? Probably not.
I use ACC on my car all the time and it is a manual. If traffic slows down enough for me to have to shift out of top gear I turn it off.
Nope. Never.
Nope, I’m more of a fan of Robocop than ED-209. Augmented human still making the decisions, so blind spot monitors, adaptive cruise, auto-dimming mirror, that’s some good cybernetics.
The fully autonomous robot making life and death decisions of either hitting the lifeform chasing the ball across the road or aiming for the ditch and possibly injuring me I can do without, probably while alerting through it’s front mounted Fratzonic alert system “Vacate the road, you have 20 seconds to comply!”.
To quote the great John Spartan “Self Drive, Self Drive now!”
Although, to the point of it driving where you ask, especially if you’re disabled, that does sound like a nice option to have.
Me: “Man I could go for some tacos..”
Car: “rerouting to nearest Mexican restuarant”
Me(quietly): “wait..no…stop…”
Joke’s on you—all the restaurants are Taco Bell.
Most of the interest in self-driving vehicles could be satisfied with passenger rail networks.
Rail networks go door to door to every address in the country at any time I choose?
My kids and I can be separated from parts of society I’d rather not interact with while riding them?
They don’t seem comparable to me at all, actually.
Rails of any kind aren’t going to be the solution for everyone and that’s not what my comment said. Most being the keyword.
Like rail, self-driving cars aren’t going to be the solution for everyone either, but they are comparable. Look at the common reasons why people want self-driving cars, even among the other comments here. Most want them for longer trips and commutes.
Look at regions where passenger and commuter rail networks are popular, and you’ll find that’s what they’re most often used for.
I dispute your usage of the word “most” as well.
Commuter rail works on a large scale in one city in the US, New York. And on a limited scale in a few others.
Long distance passenger rail is basically non-existent.
Most people who take road trips are going to visit family or stay somewhere that isn’t right next to a train station. They might fly because it’s much faster, but given the choice between a car and a train that take the same amount of time and offer much different experiences, 99% of people choose the car.
Most people who commute prefer a car and have for a long time. The way work is moving out of central cities and into less dense areas, the rise of work from home, less regimented schedules, and the degradation of quality of experience on mass transit I expect will put even more pressure on rail service, not less.
I had hoped the words “most” and “could” were enough to imply what I was proposing was as hypothetical as the idea of reliable self-driving cars.
You’re looking at it from the current state of passenger rail in the US, which is in desperate need of improvement. If you can imagine a world where autonomous vehicles are viable, then perhaps you could also imagine one where we can expand and improve passenger rail systems, public or private. Unfortunately, it’s not as sexy as the idea of your own autonomous vehicle. I understand the appeal of a self-driving car and think it would be nice, but don’t think it is as achievable as improving and expanding rail networks.
All good points, but there is still a serious renewed interest and advocacy for expanding passenger rail in the US. Also consider that working from home makes personal vehicle ownership less necessary and public transport smarter financially.
Ultimately, I’m not one of those people who thinks public transport is the only option. I would not be on this site if that were the case. I’m well aware of the problems with public transport. I’ve lived in areas where public transport is not and never will be viable.
But I do think cars and public transport can coexist in a way that people could justify wanting to use both. The problem is I see autonomous vehicles as a compromise, and I seriously doubt self-driving cars would amount to what we might hope of them. All the costs and maintenance of a regular vehicle plus the added costs for all the technology to make it autonomous. I’d rather just have the regular vehicle and pay for a train ticket on longer trips.
I appreciate this post and your argument, but I simply do not see a world where passenger rail becomes any significant share of transportation in the US. That is the difference to me between rail and self-driving cars, which I do see as inevitable (on the time scale of decades).
The better cars get, the less people will want to use mass transit. The fewer people making a traditional 9-5 commute from the suburbs to the city center, the less demand there is for rigid and inflexible rail service. The more news stories about people being burned alive on trains or criminal self defense trials about unruly homeless people being choked, the more people will avoid using the train. The fewer people who use mass transit, the fewer will be willing to pay for it. And so on.
In a perfect world, trains might be universally safe, clean, reliable, cheap, and go wherever someone wants to go whenever they want. That isn’t the world we have or are likely to get to IMO.
Just pretend its an airliner that never leaves the ground.
No. I have control issues, so I can barely handle using an Uber.
I want both but only if the car has K.I.T.T. levels of autonomy and is as easy to toggle between Auto Cruise and Normal Cruise as K.I.T.T. was and when in Normal cruise is as fun to drive as K.I.T.T. was.
Basically what I’m trying to say is I want a K.I.T.T… and a Devon, and a FLAG Mobile Unit.
And it wants it’s David Hasselhoff. Think you can pull it off?
I mean, I do talk to my watch from time to time, so maybe?
But can you rock a speedo like the Hoff?
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/masonry/000/009/243/hasselhoff-pants.gif
If only this place allowed us to upload images 🙂
I’m kinda surprised Torch hasn’t used this one in a header yet.
I want to answer both yes and no. long stretches of the interstate before I get where I want to go. I’m all for it. once I get where I want to go then absolutely not. I can see how if I’m doing a 2 to 10-hour Dr. to get to a trail, National Forest, and off-road Park or a national park then hell yes sign me up for the drive itself. BUT, I want to drive once I get there. If I had a 1 hr commute to work that public transport could not get me there then I would want the car to drive. I love driving as part of travel not as having to get someplace.
Yes, but only for long distance travel. I would pay a lot of money for a self driving van or RV. It would be great to be able to leave at night, sleep in a decent bed for 8 hours, and wake up 400+ miles away (or at your destination) the next morning. I am not interested in a self driving car, but a self driving bedroom sounds amazing.
yes! THIS!
So kind of like a sleeper car on a train?
Yes, except it is cleaner, roomier, more comfortable, on time, and going to my actual destination.
No. I quite enjoy driving and remain puzzled by the fact that so many normies consider it to be such a chore that they want to be as isolated from as possible. Really the only times I wouldn’t mind some level of driving assistance are during traffic jams or on long, boring stretches of highway.
“during traffic jams or on long, boring stretches of highway.” That is almost all of the “normies” driving experiences.
Then they need to go find a backroad and experience enlightenment
I agree but not every hobby or interest is for everyone.
Many people feel the same way about your lack of enthusiasm for their hobby, whatever it is (cooking, fashion, programming, antiquing, guns, train-spotting, bird-watching, etc), it’s important to put yourself in their shoes.
I still don’t trust self-driving cars, because they’re just the car industry’s last-ditch attempt to stop society from divesting in car-centric infrastructure. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have all the distracted and disinterested drivers in a train away from the road than in a self-driving car holding up traffic.
I’ve spent lots of time riding the bus and it’s generally very relaxing, so I assume that a self-driving car that eliminates the tedious drudgery of daily commuting would also be very relaxing. Driving yourself is fine when it’s on an interesting road where you can be engaged in using your skills, but when it’s a massive pack of cars all rolling along at 5mph stopping and go-ing and you’re 40 minutes from home FFS let the computer take the wheel. I want to be driving when I want to be driving, not because I have to.
And if we can get car-to-car communication rolling, along with a dedicated lane, then that stop-and-go 5mph traffic could be nonstop 30mph+ traffic because computers can handle compression waves the way humans can’t. Anything short of that, I’m pretty happy to just DIY.
I find the bus relaxing only because it’s a professionally- and conservatively-driven ten-ton tank that I expect to “win” in an accident (likely caused by somebody else).
No, because I love to drive.
But I think the most important question in the ‘self-driving car’ conversation is this: Would you ever be able to trust a car to drive itself? Because I think that’s where I fall flat on the idea. When your computer crashes, you reboot it, you unplug it, or more likely you hit it and curse at it, but every one of those problems can be recovered from. If your self driving car has a system crash? Pretty good chance you’re just boned.
^^THIS^^
“Would you ever be able to trust a car to drive itself?”
How much do you trust cars driven by others? That old person who can barely see over the dash? That young person with the “Student Driver” sticker on the back? That guy who just stumbled out of a bar? That coked up stock trader? That menacing Brodozer? That white Jeep driven by Cher? That person who can’t figure out a traffic circle?
I don’t. I just started teaching my son to drive, and the first thing I told him was that the most important rule in driving is “Always assume that every other car is driven by an idiot”. I can’t control the idiots behind the wheel of other cars, but I at least want to be able to control the idiot behind the wheel of mine.
If only everyone could drive like you. No speeding, no passing on the right where it is disallowed, no rolling stops, no whoopsie, I SWEAR it was yellow! intersection crossings, no road rage, no tailgating, no weaving, no crossing multiple lanes, perfect zippering, no backing up on the freeway because you missed an exit, no distractions, and you gracefully open a space to let others merge while also refrain from forcing your own way into a nonexistent opening.
And those superpowers! V2V and V2G communication so you know the guy ahead of you is about to hit his brakes because you also know the guy in front of him is going to hit his brakes because the guy in front of HIM is about to hit his brakes. You can map every bit of road debris miles up the road and sense potholes even before they form. You can see in infrared and microwave frequencies as well as visible making night and bad weather as clear as a bright sunny day.
As good as I’m sure you think you are autonomous vehicles have the potential to be far better.
Wow, I’m sorry I hit a nerve with my reasonable comments about loving to drive on a car webstie and not fully trusting autonomous software that hasn’t yet proven itself to be safe.
Loving to drive is one thing. “Would you ever be able to trust a car to drive itself” is another. Yes software glitches. So does human judgement, especially under the influence of drugs or sleep deprivation. Yes software crashes And humans suffer medical emergencies behind the wheel. Yes software can potentially be hacked to become weaponized. And as we saw just a few weeks ago humans are susceptible to being hacked into crowd killing weapons as well.
Humans as a group have repeatedly demonstrated they are NOT safe behind the wheel. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. At least allow AVs to replace the worst humans behind the wheel.
I personally don’t trust it as well as I trust myself at this point, and nothing I’ve seen on the horizon convinces me that my opinion is going to change. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be better, that doesn’t mean it’s not coming down the pipeline, that it isn’t the future etc, that simply means that on a personal level, I don’t trust the idea that it would work as well controlling the car as well as I can. Could it? Probably, in fact more than likely it will, especially as I get older. But I would have to see it work consistanly well and not see articles on a fairly regular basis about the failures of it (like the one about GM recalling cars for their radar braking system failing that was published right before this article was) before I would trust its judgement over my own.
The difference is GM can fix their radar braking. Can humans be so easily fixed?
Will: “This Audi is so much nicer than the VW I had last week”
Audi: “You will keep my wife’s name out your f*cking mouth”
Fresh Prince Theme Plays (including rare third verse)
Just a thought- had Chris Rock made a crack about Tracy Pollan’s spouse’s medical condition, would that have been okay?
There’s a big difference between alopecia and Parkinson’s. One can be 100% hidden and doesn’t preclude any kind of activity other than what your mental health allows you to do. Parkinson’s kills people and ruins lives for decades before that.
Also Will and Jada are notorious twats and Michael J Fox is a nice and generous person.
So those two scenarios are not comparable.
I’m not sure this is something we can equivocate on. Rock was wrong.
The fastest way to get me to stop using cars is to make them all self driving. Nope, I’m done, it’s been a blast, I’ll move to somewhere I can walk. (OK, I’m American so what that really means is I’ll die inside my suburban house since I’ll never be able to afford city living, but still.)