Safe societies constrain creativity and the human spirit says Matthew Crawford, a doctor of political philosophy and motorcycle mechanic who's written a book about freedom, risk and taking back control.
Sunday Morning talked to Dr Crawford about the ideas behind his bestseller Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road.
Matt Crawford Photo: Supplied / Jean-Jacques Santucci
He says learning and practising trade skills is underrated for the wider benefits it bestows, helping you live concretely in an evermore abstract world where we're more and more separated from the food we eat and the plumbing we rely on, and the carpentry that holds our houses together.
And he argues the proliferation and tightening of limits and rules isn't good for us, and admits to racking up a few speeding tickets, but says the thrill of speed on the road creates the joy of movement and valuable freedom and play.
"We have what I call an ideology of safety-ism; there's this weird feedback loop wherein the safer we become the more intolerable any remaining risk appears, there's an erosion of the arenas for exercising our skills and intelligence.
"I see driverless cars as one further instance of this wider phenomenon in which we give up our skills and competence for the promise of safety and convenience. Then our skills atrophy from lack of use which leads to demands for yet further automation, and if you go far enough down that road the whole world starts to look like one big assisted living facility."
Crawford says risk enriches our lives and extends our capabilities.
"Risk is bound up with human-ising possibilities; I begin the book with this vignette of riding a dirt bike through the woods. So there's trees and roots and rock and mud and all this stuff coming at you really fast, even if you're only going 15 miles an hour.
"If I push it a little beyond my comfort level and it goes well, meaning I don't crash, I feel enlarged, elated. But of course often it doesn't go well and I crash, and I've actually broken a lot of bones doing that in the past, and... it's because risk is an important element of life."
He says he actually takes safety very seriously, and wants to live a long life as much as the next guy, but he just takes a different approach to how he weighs up the components in the bigger picture of safety.
"There's this idea that we have a 'risk budget', this is a psychological finding, so when we make the cars safer we really adjust our driver behaviour and start taking more risks - we accept a certain amount of risk and we'll redistribute it from one place to another.
Photo: Supplied
"So sometimes things that make cars safer ostensibly, like automatic lane keeping, automatic breaking and all sorts of reminders, they tend to make the driver less engaged, more likely to pick up a phone or even a book - you see people reading books on the highway. We make that adjustment, so the net safety picture is a little different to if you just focus on the tech.
"There's this great quote that if we all drove as if we were Aztec sacrifices strapped to the front of the car there'd be a lot less accidents. We've gone really in the opposite direction [in vehicle design] pursuing safety through mass, elevation and a sort of tank-like enclosure. So an SUV now might be 6000 lbs [2700 kg].
"There's a kind of bloat that insulates you from the road, and now driverless cars are a realisation that we're so distracted behind the wheel and so unengaged that maybe we're just not capable of doing it for ourselves any more."
Removal from risk removes us from development and growth from that risk, Crawford says.
"We're the kind of creatures who use tools, and in the best cases they almost begin to feel like a prosthetic that merely extends the abilities of your body.
"There's some interesting research on the role of mobility in the development of our higher cognitive capacities, including spatial reasoning. There's a part of the brain, the hippocampus that only starts developing when a child is no longer being carried passively, but is actively controlling their own movements through the world, and they begin developing a map of the world."
He says some of this autonomy is being lost to cynics of commerce and surveillance.
"You have to ask yourself why Google has this massive push into driverless cars, and I think the way to begin is by asking yourself 'what is Google?' And of course the answer is that it's the world's largest advertising firm.
"Your commute is time of private headspace where you're not available for the whole logic of internet economics, which is harvesting your attention and packaging it and selling it based on surveillance to discern your patterns and your character and your behaviour.
"So I think what we're talking about is the car becoming another device, another portal to this whole surveillance, capitalism universe. And that doesn't sit very well with this idea of just being able to roam, and not giving anyone an account of your whereabouts or your movements.
"There's something rejuvenating about just striking out on the road - maybe you don't even know where you're going - there's a kind of indeterminacy to it, an openness, it feels important."
But have we already left behind the degree of risk he celebrates, and moved on from that as a society?
"Nietzche the philospher had this idea of the last man, and what he meant was a creature who's devoted primarily to ease and convenience, safety and security. His complaint was that such a creature would no longer be capable of great things.
"In the book I offer a counterpoint to that which is these scenes of grassroots motorsports. I go around as an anthropologist really and investigate these different subcultures. And one thing that really stood out is the spirit of play.
"It's obviously risky stuff, motorsport, some of it's just beautiful to behold, and it's also interesting to see the communities that develop around this, there's a solidarity among people who are taking their skills to the highest level and taking on risk for the sake of developing an excellence - so that's a counter to this idea of the last man."
