PaulScott said:
...It should further be noted that those of us who grew up driving are the only ones with any romantic notions of driving. Many young people these days don't even want cars, much less want to spend time driving them. As we old farts die off, the next generation will gladly sign on to robot cars since they will be cheaper, safer and will allow more productivity.
The reality (for most people, most of the time) today, driving is an experience ranging from miserable to boring, largely restricted either to suburban/urban traffic, or to freeways engineered to be (relatively) safe, even when driven on by incompetent and/or inattentive human drivers.
But does anyone here truly enjoy the monotonous hours of freeway travel, on roads designed to reduce the risks, but also take most of the fun, out of the road miles?
Now that I avoid freeways whenever possible (to save time in my LEAF, up here in DC-less-land) I realize I always used to drive so damn fast on freeways, largely because driving on them is such a depressing experience.
I am old enough to remember when families
went for a drive because it was enjoyable.
And I moved out of the San Francisco bay area, ~20 years ago, in part to be able to continue my
hobby of driving.
Would many under ~50 years of age today, even understand those concepts?
The good news is that outside the overpopulated regions where most "drivers" live, many of the pre-freeway roads are still there, and often free of traffic (but still very dangerous per mile driven, BTW) and I now enjoy them in my LEAF.
But I also realize how my present attitudes towards driving are eccentricities, not representative of the larger population.