We recently heard about how the Biden administration’s “infrastructure” bill mandates “kill switches” in all new cars. Now the feds are talking about not just minimizing the number of traffic fatalities — which already has dropped markedly in the last 50 years — but reducing it to zero.
Interestingly, this lofty ambition is the brainchild of the same people who, when you speak of eliminating illegal migration, insist it’s an impossible and unrealistic goal. Nonetheless, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — who couldn’t even fix the potholes when mayor of South Bend — plans to bend America to his will in an effort to eliminate every last traffic death.
And if you think that a government couldn’t even begin to approach this utopian roads vision without complete government control, well, you’re right.
As the Independent Sentinel reported Sunday:
Pothole Pete wasn’t given the job as Secretary of Transportation because he’s qualified. Mr. Buttigieg got the job because he’s a gay man married to another gay man and he’s an obedient leftist. Mr. Buttigieg, the son of a famous communist professor, is redesigning our roads with control in mind.
He has said that Americans “need a national change of mentality”….
The plan is funded by a huge infrastructure bill passed by Congress. It isn’t aimed at fixing our ailing infrastructure so much as [at] fake racist roads and control of the masses.
… “Today we commit that our goal is this: zero. Our goal is zero deaths” from traffic accidents, Buttigieg said Thursday, according to The Associated Press. “The decision to commit to that goal in a serious way at a national level changes the way cities and towns design roads, changes the way companies build cars, changes the way people drive.”
Buttigieg’s plan “is to spend $5 billion in grants and issue guidance encouraging cities to lower speed limits, adopt safer road design by creating dedicated bike and bus lanes, and improve street lighting and crosswalks,” the Blaze informs, providing more specificity.
The Department of Transportation “added that roadway safety is ‘inextricably linked with the Biden-Harris Administration’s equity and climate goals [uh-huh],’ observing that traffic fatalities ‘disproportionately affect communities of color, people living in rural areas, people with disabilities, and older adults,’” the site also writes.
“Other components of the plan include pilot programs to study and promote increased use of traffic cameras [a.k.a., revenue-raising devices]; updates to the federal manual that sets the requirements for U.S. street markings and design; regulations mandating automatic emergency braking in all new passenger vehicles; new standards for car safety performance; and enforcing requirements from the infrastructure law for automakers to install anti-drunken driving technology in motor vehicles,” the Blaze continues.
Meanwhile, trains in California are being habitually robbed, and we’re enduring a supply-chain crisis worsened by transportation issues. Despite this, Buttigieg — who took a two-month “paternity leave” in the midst of these problems — dreams of a Great Road Leap Forward. Apparently, even his priorities aren’t straight.
This doesn’t mean the feds don’t have their transportation triumphs, though; not at all. Why, the Biden administration has been quite successfully (and secretly) flying, at taxpayer expense, illegal aliens into our nation’s interior in what has been described as a criminal human-smuggling operation.
But don’t think about that. Instead, be like Buttigieg and concern yourself with how “the half-year traffic death total for 2020 was 20,160, the highest half-year figure since 2006,” as the Blaze relates.
Of course, between 1972 and today, our traffic fatality rate has declined from 4.6 per 10,000 motor vehicles to 1.41 and the number of yearly road deaths from 56,278 to approximately 40,000. This is despite there being about three times as many cars on the road now as in the early ‘70s.
We can largely thank better technology for this, but it’s not good enough for our betters. And no grandiose plan’s rollout would be complete without a deceptive model for inspiration. In Buttigieg’s case, he cited in a press conference Hoboken, New Jersey, which has had no traffic deaths since early 2018. Yes, we can!
But I know more about Hoboken than most journalists because I’ve actually been there — numerous times. Here’s reality: The city is only two square miles, three-quarters of a mile of which is water. In other words, Hoboken is better conceptualized as a neighborhood. It’s also the third-most-densely populated American city among municipalities with a population above 50,000.
So this is Buttigieg’s poster soy boy for road safety: 1.25 square miles of urban land area so congested that, and this is the case, traffic moves at a crawl. So, no, you won’t get killed on the roads there — but you may want to split a vein trying to negotiate them.
Is this what Buttigieg envisions for the whole nation? Obviously, you won’t have many road deaths in a Soylent Green situation in which congestion limits the average speed to about 10 mph.
But, no, even the millions of illegals the feds are planting in our country won’t help create a coast-to-coast urban jungle anytime soon. Rather, continuous government monitoring of your vehicle and kill switches will be necessary to supposedly achieve the promised road utopia. All we need is total state control.
Some consider this a good idea. “If it saves just one life…,” they’ll proclaim. But if security at any cost is an imperative, why not, once technology allows for it, just implant a computer chip in everyone’s head that can be used to control his every move? We might all be really “safe” then.
For someone who frittered away too much time watching TV in his ‘70s youth (like me), it brings to mind the old Star Trek episode in which androids decide to control humanity — for our own good. (Video below; relevant portion begins at 1:35.)
“You will be happy…and…controlled,” said the chief android autocrat. And, hey, with artificial intelligence, we may get there one day. In the meantime, at least we have the intelligence of Pete Buttigieg.
