The Horror of Distracted Driving

Pete Luna / The San Antonio Express-News via AP file

Wednesday, March 29, 2017, was a beautiful day in south central Texas. The temperature was in the mid-eighties and visibility was excellent at nearly ten miles.

Shortly after noon, a church bus with its driver and twelve passengers was returning on US Route 83 from a church retreat. The long, straight highway had a speed limit of 70 mph, which was the speed the bus was thought to be travelling. The passengers, all duly belted into their seats, had no idea who they were about to meet.

Coming the opposite way, but not necessarily in the opposite lane, was Jack Young, 20, in a large, heavy pickup truck also travelling at 70 mph. Mr. Young admitted to checking his text messages at the moment that the two vehicles collided at a combined speed of 140 mph.

One of the church ladies, horribly injured, survived. So, unfortunately, did Mr. Young. Twelve souls in the church bus went to meet their maker that day because Mr. Young felt an irresistible urge to check his phone for text messages.

This horrible incident is regrettably becoming far too common. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA):

“In 2016 alone, 3,450 people were killed. 391,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers in 2015.”

This behavior on the part of the distracted drivers is reprehensible. They are not exercising their civil rights. They are not responding to an emergency. They are not doing anything except to act in a wholly selfish manner, to prioritize their need to check their phone over your very survival. If you aren’t outraged, perhaps you should rethink this.

There are few among you, dear readers, who have not been horrified to see an approaching vehicle veer directly toward you. Most of you are lucky and the oncoming driver woke up at the last second. But many thousands of you die or are mangled. This is unacceptable.

We have been hypnotized lately by the highly publicized spate of school shootings. (Some posit that this very publicity contributes to new maniacal attacks). But for some reason we can’t seem to capture the public’s attention for the far deadlier scourge of distracted drivers.

Why is that? Because guns seem evil but cars and trucks do not? But if you are honest, in neither case is the machine at fault. It is always the fault of the operator. And the actual damage done, almost 3,500 deaths and 391,000 injuries per year, is enormous, far exceeding the emotionally horrific carnage committed by school shooters. Both are horrible. But the damage exacted by distracted drivers is many times greater. Where is the outrage?

It is time to think logically. Think in terms of lives lost, of lives mangled.

The solution is many-fold. Intense police enforcement of the symptoms of distracted driving (phone use, lane departure, tailgating, and other inappropriate driving behaviors). The courts must be equally forceful.

But we also need social pressure, disapproval. If you are riding with someone who checks their phone, yell at them! Express your outrage. Demand to be let out to walk, a far safer course for you.

Does this mean that we slack off on the scourge of school shootings? Of course not. We need to pursue the root causes of psychopathic young males who act out their fantasies. Cultural, mental health, familial – there are many potential causes which must be pursued.

But when we can save hundreds of times more lives by prioritizing the seemingly innocuous act of “distracted driving,” which is actually a monumental uncivil, irresponsible, deadly act, then we must do so. The numbers don’t lie.

The souls of the church ladies plead with us.

The Last Green Valley

Spring is finally, firmly here. There was some doubt, earlier. Snow in April, chilly temperatures even in May. But we finally had a 90-degree day and the grass and leaves and flowers are booming.

Now that spring is assured and summer on its way, it is time to embrace the wonders of New England. And one of those wonders is very nearby. The Last Green Valley (TLGV) is a geographic area extending along the eastern border of Connecticut and up into Massachusetts. It is so named because it is an oasis within a heavily populated strip of 25 million extending down the eastern seaboard from Boston to Washington, DC. The last green valley.

Viewed on a map of nighttime satellite photos, this 1,100 square mile area appears as a dark ribbon parallel to the western border of Rhode Island. Dark, quiet, peaceful at night, and full of exploratory opportunities by day.

According to the National Park Service, “The region is 1,100 square miles or 707,000 acres with 77% forest and farm lands; 24 state parks and forests, 6 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Flood Control facilities, and hundreds of miles of trails. The region’s history is diverse including significant archaeological sites and cultural stories from the Early American, Native American, Revolutionary War, Civil War, and the Industrial Revolution. TLGV includes 43 historic town commons and greens and more than 100 historic sites and museums open to the public.” The United States Congress has recognized this prized area as a National Historic Corridor, deserving of recognition and protection.

According to the Last Green Valley website, there are 35 towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut included in the region. “The Massachusetts communities are:  Brimfield, Charlton, Dudley, E. Brookfield, Holland, Oxford, Southbridge, Sturbridge, and Webster.  The Connecticut municipalities are:  Ashford, Brooklyn, Canterbury, Chaplin, Coventry, Eastford, Franklin, Griswold, Hampton, Killingly, Lebanon, Lisbon, Mansfield, Norwich, Plainfield, Pomfret, Preston, Putnam, Scotland, Sprague, Sterling, Thompson, Union, Voluntown, Windham, and Woodstock.”

What a fabulous resource, and only a bit over an hour from Boston, Providence, Springfield, Worcester, and Hartford. Easy to access, it is bisected by interstate highway 395 between Norwich, Conn., and Worcester, Mass. From east to west, one can access it from U.S. Route 6. By what accident did this bucolic area become and remain so?

The first notable differentiator is that the rivers reaching up into the region from Long Island Sound at New London (Thames, Shetucket, and Quinebaug) are navigable only to Norwich, a distance of 15 miles as the crow flies. This is in great contrast to the Connecticut River which is navigable to Enfield, Conn. (nearly to Springfield, Mass.) To European settlers in the mid-1600s, this made a huge difference. Navigable waters made for easy access.

Another is that while industrialization thrived in Boston and Providence and Hartford, the Quinebaug-Shetucket region provided rich soil and woodlands and remained mostly agrarian.

And finally, in the mid-twentieth century, an attempt to build an interstate highway directly between Hartford and Providence failed. One of the few failures in the country (another was in Kansas City), this inadvertently assured the survival of many towns and shops and restaurants and inns and all the attendant pleasures of small-town life.

So if you have been unaware of this local treasure, you might want to plan some summer-time activities. Antiquing. Astronomy/night sky views. Bicycling. Boating and fishing. Camping. Golf. Hiking. Canoeing/kayaking. And much, much more.

A wealth of resources may be found at the Last Green Valley organization, http://thelastgreenvalley.org and at the National Park Service https://www.nps.gov/qush.

This is a national resource which we in New England are fortunate to have nearby. Please avail yourself of its treasures and pleasures.

Human Jobs in the Robot Era

Over our long human history, we have experienced several huge waves of change and will certainly see many more during the existence of Homo sapiens. In fact, when change ceases, it probably means that we are extinct.

The early hunter/gatherers were put out of business by the agrarians. Then the agrarians were pulled off the farm by the siren call of mill and manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs then gave way to service and knowledge workers. All of these major changes were driven by technological innovation.

And the common theme is that, while at the time each wrenching disruption was viewed as a horrendous cause of unemployment, in the end there were far more jobs created than were lost.

Agriculture demanded the harvesting and storage and processing of crops. Manufacturing drove a need for factory builders and factory workers and distribution networks for raw materials and finished goods. The knowledge revolution required scientists and technicians and skilled assemblers, as well as a huge panoply of service workers. In each case, the demand for workers increased sharply, though the required skill mix changed.

Now we are faced with another major change enabled by advanced computing. Artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of computers to serve in place of human workers, was anticipated by scientists in the 1950s and 60s. It was logical that reasoning machines could supplant humans in specific tasks, but the computers of that time were woefully inadequate.

But now they are more than adequate, and people are worried. Robots are one face of artificial intelligence and they are here, now.

A recent Wall Street Journal report gives us some succor. As before, this technological wave will be a huge job creator at the same time that some routine workers are displaced.

In an article titled “Seven Jobs that Robots Will Create – or Expand,” the WSJ gives us some insight into new occupations that will come into being.

AI Builder – these are the PhD scientists, but also skilled machinists and builders, who will create the robots that will live among us. These robots will range from simple automated vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers to complex factory assemblers to military scouts and drones. The AI builder jobs will require high STEM and precision manufacturing skills. These are not minimum wage jobs.

Customer-Robot Liaison – mainly addressing the needs of corporate customers, robot manufacturers will need to keep their clients happy with the robots. These jobs are more of a customer satisfaction role and, while requiring some knowledge of technology, the main focus is social and personal interrelationship skills.

Robot Managers – while robots can be incredibly efficient, they are also incredibly stupid about things outside of their known context. Robot managers will oversee the behavior of robots, such as security bots, and ensure that they are performing properly. For instance, if a security bot continues to raise the alarm when the FedEx guy arrives, that must be fed back to the AI builders for correction. More importantly, the customer must be kept comfortable. This job will require people skills as well.

Data Labelers – computers have no native understanding of our world. For AI to perform useful tasks, we must explain what everything is. This crucial task is done by humans who label pertinent data, allowing the AI to learn. Mehdi Miremadi of McKinsey & Co. tells us that companies developing self-driving cars may have “hundreds and hundreds of folks, even more, sitting and labeling data.” According to TechRepublic, this may be the “new blue-collar job of the AI era.”

Drone Performance Artists – in the purely creative and artistic realm, drones are already being used in the arts as “dynamic light installations and flying props.” Artists who have a certain level of technical chops will be very successful in employing these machines in their own, or their customers’, shows or events. Like a photographer who needed to learn the technology of cameras, these artists will need to master drones.

AI Lab Scientists – one example here is AI used in pharmacological research. When the AI discovers a potentially useful medicinal compound, it must be rigorously tested. Human scientists and technicians are required to confirm that the newly discovered medicine is effective with no unacceptable side effects. AI will speed discoveries, but human involvement is fundamentally necessary.

Safety and Test Drivers – self driving vehicles hold great promise. But there have already been some tragic accidents. Uber and Google and others involved in autonomous vehicles employ test drivers to ensure that the units are operating properly. In addition, some companies are now offering semi-autonomous shuttles to move people about but require a safety driver to oversee the operation of the automation. For the foreseeable future, there will be many people involved in this arena.

These are just a handful of new jobs that are being created by the AI revolution. And there will be many more, most of them unanticipated. In the meanwhile, medical and service jobs will continue to grow.

There will be no shortage of jobs. Only, perhaps, a reluctance to retool oneself. While perhaps not for any one of us, our childrens’ future is bright.