[C]omputers don’t get tired, don’t drink or take drugs, and don’t get distracted or get road rage. Murphy, the author, says the argument that people are better than machines will not hold for long – especially as more and more people get used to autonomous cars.

“The assumption is that we are living in some kind of driver utopia now and machines are going to destroy that,” he says. “The fact is that we have 41,000 highway deaths in America every year. If we piled those bodies up, that would be a public health crisis. But we are so used to the 41,000 deaths that we don’t even think about it.”

Virtually all those deaths are from driver error, he says. “What if we took that number down to 200? Here’s how it looks to me. Thirty years from now my grandchildren are going to say to me: ‘You people had pedals on machines that you slowed down and sped up with? You had a wheel to turn it? And everybody had their own? And you were killing 41,000 people a year? You people were savages!’

“They are going to look at driver-operated vehicles the way people now look at a pregnant woman smoking,” he says. “It’ll be the absolute epitome of barbarism.”

Honestly, this whole article is full of bits worth discussing, agreeing on, and disagreeing on. Like this one on eroding wages . . .

But it’s a nostalgia out of sync with a reality of declining wages, thanks in part to declining union powers, restricted freedoms, and a job under mortal threat from technology, says Murphy. Truckers made an average of $38,618 a year in 1980. If wages had just kept pace with inflation, that would be over $114,722 today – but last year the average wage was $41,340.