The C.R.A.S.H. Manifesto

by JEFF GREEN

A call for rapid social and technological progress to end the preventable human tragedy inflicted on all citizens by our primary method of transportation

Fighting A Deadly Affliction

Imagine if you will that the world is assailed by a ubiquitous virus that strikes hundreds of people a day, irregardless of their age or health or location. It is a virus that attacks without warning, killing or maiming individuals or groups in a few seconds and in the most spectacularly grisly fashion: decapitating, amputating, blinding, crippling, paralyzing. In this world the panic-stricken call for a cure is daily headline news. The public vehemently demands their government undertake a serious program of investment into research to combat this heinous plague. They want nothing less than a crash program!

What's in a name?

There are several interpretations of the acronym "C.R.A.S.H." The first one is the actual one but there are many others that not only apply very well, but also clarify the goals and philosophy of The C.R.A.S.H. Program:

C.R.A.S.H. is...

The Slaughter Must Stop!

That functioning modern society needs high-speed mobility for its members is not particularly arguable. Whether we as a species would be better off if we abandoned those aspects of our collective selves that seem to need infinite growth, exaggerated consumption, and limitless wealth-acquisition is not the purview of this presentation. The increasing shift of commerce away from goods and towards information, combined with a rapidly expanding reliance on cybernetic interconnectedness which promises to reduce the need for centralized work areas fed by mass commuting, all hold some hope that the future will see at least a slowing of automotive expansionism. But there will be no end to the cull in anything like the near future.

But how can anything be done? There is no cure for the car, it's what we are!

Let's make one thing clear right now: this manifesto does not advocate the elimination of the automobile. Whether or not, for environmental or aesthetic or cultural reasons we as a society should be seeking substantially alternate means of individual transportation, is, again, not within the bounds of this present argument. The issue at this juncture is far more facile: people are being slaughtered. Before we as a culture can have the luxury of invoking any kind of moral high ground as to technological self-determination, the slaughter must stop. And this does not have to mean the elimination of the automobile, a proposal whose scale and difficulty would demand such a transformation of our social fabric that it lacks feasibility in any but extremely long-range projections.

Your loved ones may be next...

The ugly truth is that the cure for this particular plague is well within the reach of our present technology. Its formula has been known for decades. The failure by any government at any level to make any capital outlay towards expediting the manufacture of this cure may be one of the most criminal collective behaviours, by sheer number of victims, of which our species is guilty.

A Villainous Story

Imagine turning our greatest radio telescope towards the stars and detecting the unmistakable signal of an intelligence in another part of our galaxy. We decode the signal, but instead of a greeting, we discover to our horror that it is a plea for help -- that it's a documentary about what happened to them when a malevolent galactic super-villain decided to really mess up their fledgeling civilization. This despicable character, over the course of just a few generations, made sure that almost every adult member of the species got access to a tremendously powerful, and socially and personally seductive, mass-produceable technology -- a multi-ton moving metal behemoth powered by the controlled explosion of volatile fuels which, in full operational mode, had the destructive potential of a bomb powerful enough to cause major structural damage to buildings and kill many people.

If one of every 10,000 televisions randomly exploded during its operational lifetime -- killing or maiming those watching it -- what would we do?

This dastardly villain then convinced the denizens of this planet that each individual should move their machine -- while they, and their families and friends, sat within its mechanical folds -- at speeds so great that any unprotected member of the species would invariably be killed or seriously maimed if caught in its path, and the operator and passengers could easily suffer the same fate if anything more substantial was struck. Then, just because this villain was so truly malevolent, it ensured that those machines going in exactly opposite directions were conducted by members of this species on tracks that were as close as possible to each other! Even a minor control error on the part of a single individual could easily cause two or more machines to meet with a maximized aggregate velocity and resultant maximized destructive potential.

To top it off, the individuals find that their society begins to demand that they must undertake this treacherous activity often several times a day no matter what the environmental conditions, their own skill level, or their relative physical or psychological state. And they do this with the knowledge that in all probability a significant percentage of other individuals they might encounter are operating their machines at an inadequate skill level and/or in a state of functional impairment.

Sadly, this story has no superhero, and this villain's insane program of relentless horror is continuing unchecked...

Unfortunately, when the documentary ends with the state of affairs at the time of its sending, things are not going well on this planet. The malevolent being (he has many names, but we'll call him Greed) has the planet in his thrall, and the death count is extraordinary. In their self-defence, the peoples of that world sought to minimize the carnage by adapting the vehicles with restraint devices and making the operation of a machine while seriously impaired a punishable offence, but these initiatives were more than countered by increasing vehicle velocity and rapidly expanding numbers of operational units.

Numbers From A Neighbour

According to an article from the American Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the number of deaths on U.S. highways in 1997 was "the equivalent of a jet crash killing 115 people every single day [...] 99 out of every 100 people injured in the U.S. transportation system are injured in motor vehicle crashes: approximately 5 to 6 million every year. Despite this fact, highway safety accounts for only one percent of the budget of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Motor vehicle crashes cost society more than $150 billion every year in medical, rehabilitation and long-term care costs, lost productivity, lost tax revenue, property damage and police, judicial and social service costs. The health care portion is approximately $14 billion (of which Medicare and Medicaid pay $3.7 billion or almost 30 percent). Motor vehicle crashes [...] are the leading cause of death for Americans ages one to 34 and the leading cause of injury for all age groups. Alcohol involvement remains the leading factor contributing to fatal crashes. In 1997, alcohol was present in 39 percent of all fatal traffic crashes. The second most significant problem is speed, which is a factor in approximately one-third of all fatal crashes."

By a significant margin, the automobile is the single largest cause of accidental death for children...

Although global numbers are not easily available, it is probably safe to assume that it is roughly 10 times the U.S. figures. This would imply that over 50 million men, women, and children are injured every year in automobile related accidents at a total annual cost of more than $1 trillion (US) to the global economy. Isn't there something better we could be doing with that much money on a yearly basis?

If the legislators who first cleared the way for the domination of the world by the motor vehicle were made aware that once given free rein, this device would kill more people by the end of the century than all the great plagues of Europe, what do you think they would have done?

Are we mad?

Though there is, for obvious reasons, no present means of verification, it is strongly suspected by the relevant authorities that the single largest cause of highway death is sleep. How can any behavioural system be considered sane when its very nature can induce drowsiness, but falling asleep is often fatal?!

Bring Us The Cure!

To paraphrase the famous anti-gun control slogan: it isn't automobiles that kill people, it's drivers. And for the vast majority of automotive functions we need to have drivers in these vehicles no more than we need to manually negotiate the pathways of our telephone calls.

The automation of the automobile is a very old idea...

Henry Ford himself, pioneer of automation in the manufacturing of automobiles, speculated about the eventual automation of the machine itself. Visionary individuals have presented legitimate proposals every few years for most of this century. It wasn't until the last two decades that the technology has been available to make these proposals any more than fanciful, but it hasn't stopped the R&D. One need only reference back-copies of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines, which from the 1950s on have regularly presented serious proposals from serious research houses. No less a spokesperson for the ascendant technology of lunar-bound America than Walter Cronkite, in his late-60s CBS series The Twenty-First Century, espoused his personal certainty that by the 1980s the highways would be completely computer-controlled, and demonstrated operational Disneyesque prototypes. All the major automotive manufacturers have at least explored the idea on paper, and many have gone much farther.

The simple fact is that, had we as a people begun our affair with the automobile with the implicit understanding that a very high priority would be placed on bringing about the automation of the system as soon as technically possible, this could be a very different world. We might be climbing into our cars today, punching in our destination, and sitting back to read a book, surf the Internet, or tune into a broadband transmission while we travelled. At the very least the infrastructure would most certainly already be in place that would allow the rapid transition to automation that present technology now makes readily and economically achievable.

What?!? Not DRIVE?? Are you NUTS??

I have nothing against people that like to drive. I like to drive. I predict a healthy industry supplying virtual driving experiences in home systems and arcades, and a steady stream of thrill seekers attending off-road and racetrack theme parks and events. I have nothing against sky diving, but however reliable the equipment, please don't make me jump out of a plane every time I want to go downtown.

There can be no question that, economic issues aside, the single most powerful factor against the rapid institutionalization of a program of automation is individual psychology. It is by far the most difficult factor to combat. In a world that worships power and yet in the name of efficiency must regularly minimize individual power, the automobile is the only place where many people feel themselves to be in control of their lives. Unfortunately theirs are not the only lives at risk. To accept this evolution the average individual must come to see the automotive infrastructure the way they now readily accept powerlessness in all other forms of mass transportation.

Okay... So what are you proposing?

Clearly this is not a simple prospect. We are not talking about a six-week, six-month, or even six-year project. But if the present pace of automotive evolution is maintained it could well be half a century before any kind of automation dominates the system, and probably longer. It is time that can literally be measured in human lives.

The goal of transforming culture must be made a social priority. It's been done before. It is not unreasonable that a charismatic leader might stand before the public tomorrow and make the statement: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of putting every individual into a computer-controlled vehicle and delivering them safely to their destination."

The C.R.A.S.H. Program Unveiled

I propose the formation of a C.R.A.S.H. Program advocacy group, a committee purposed to promote and promulgate the cause of automotive automation. The specific form, and implementation, of the program still needs to be determined, but the core functions of it would be:

Won't this be expensive?

Ask the orphan, the widow, the bereaved parent, or the paraplegic...

You bet. But we're living in a world where the manufacturers of video games were, last year, sitting on an eighty billion dollar industry; where a single Canadian bank can announce fifty billion dollars in profit and no one blinks; where an internet start-up company can have a market value equivalent to the GNP of a developing nation... Do we really have our priorities screwed on right?

To counter the costs of implementing such a grand project would be the savings realized through its implementation. There would also be a technological boom on a scale not seen since the Apollo space program, as systems are designed and put into place to meet the demands of total automotive automation.

Hmmm... So Now What?

It's just an idea. Like any new idea in a culture of free speech you are free to embrace it or reject it; to ignore it, condemn it, or promote it. At the very least you might think about it. And perhaps, after you've given it some thought, you will sleep. While sleeping, perhaps you will dream.

In this dream there is a terrorist group attacking our country, striking at random, killing and maiming without pattern and without restriction. The death count rises on the front page of every paper every single day. The faces of the victims -- infants, grandparents, busloads of children, famous entertainers, beloved doctors, entire families on vacation -- cry out to us from every newscast. The mourning never stops. This crime needs no public clamour to summon swift, massive, and decisive response from the highest level of the state. As one, the nation rallies behind a fully militarized program utilizing every reserve that the public purse has available. There is no doubt in any individual's mind that the situation fully justifies nothing less than a crash program.