O'Toole was in the Lake Norman area Wednesday, telling residents and officials why the Red Line Regional Rail Project is a bust. Among the reasons, he stated at length, is that, a couple of decades from now, cars that require no driver and run on autopilot will be tooling up and down the highway. Traffic will flow smoothly, he told an audience at Cornelius Town Hall, because cars will be perfectly and equally spaced apart, all going the speed limit, and there will be no accidents.
What he failed to mention, Talkers observe, is that the only way that can work is if everybody, without exception, owned a car for which a driver isn't required. Driverless cars can't anticipate, it seems to us, the unpredictable human factor or the "crotch rocket" kamikaze pilots who so dearly love to weave in and out of traffic at super high speeds. Traffic engineers will tell you that most delays on the highways aren't caused by accidents, but rather merging from on-ramps, and generally exceeding the capacity of the roadway.
Those pesky factors aside, the only way to make the driverless car concept work is to require everyone to purchase and drive ... er ... ride one on the highway, thereby artificially stimulating an industry that seems to be doing pretty well on its own right now.
The idea of convincing Americans to let go of the wheel and asking all of them to buy a new car with autopilot technology at the same time is folly at best. Requiring them to do so would be Big Brother at its best.
So to recap: government-owned passenger trains are bad, but government-mandated autopilot cars are good. After just a brief encounter, Talkers have no doubt that the man from Cato is a genius, but this argument needs to be re-tooled.
Onion appeal
Like Burmese pythons in the Everglades, he was everywhere.
Davidson College biologist Mike Dorcas, lead author of a study linking an infestation of the non-indigenous giant snakes to drastic declines in the population of mammals in Florida's Everglades National Park, was a one-professor quote machine last week as he fielded calls from snake-struck national and international media outlets.
Talkers who attended a Super Bowl party with Dorcas Sunday were pleased to note that all the notoriety hadn't gone to the good doctor's head, even after one of his quotes was the subject of a question over the weekend on National Public Radio's comedy quiz show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!
In fact, it wasn't seeing his name in USA Today or hearing it on NPR that made Dorcas most proud. No, it was a mention in another bastion of journalistic excellence.
"We made The Onion!" he gushed, referring to the irreverent online news spoof, which ran several fake person-on-the-street interviews related to the findings of the snake study (which was published in the unfailingly reverent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
Next up for Dorcas? He tells Talkers he'd love to make it on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. That should be no problem for host Stephen Colbert. Given the parade of politicians he's had on his show, Colbert should be quite accustomed to snakes.
