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Comment by davidmurdoch | Hacker News Reader

Interesting perception. Here in the US it's unfathomable to think a regulation that doesn't allow people to drive cars would ever receive a single vote. It wouldn't happen. Citizens here would revolt and politicians in support would quite literally be murdered over this. People here really love driving their cars. Yes, to an insane degree.

But from my news bubble, and my perception of much of Europe... it seems to me that it is very likely a regulation like this would happen in Europe, probably through a well-meaning green initiative.

Funny how perceptions of others can be so drastically different!

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We're decades away from no one being allowed to drive manually, but people don't actually like driving. They like the autonomy of a car. That's not the same thing.

If there's a button in people's cars that they can push and then play on their phone for the rest of the trip, 99% of people are going to push that button.

And after a few years of that, and insurance rates being higher for manual driving, we'll start seeing some areas be automated-driving only, which will then expand...

I don't think you've been deep in car culture or just disregard them as a minority group. This minority would become extremely vocal if manual driving were to be regulated by the government. Insurance incentivization is another matter; they're used to that already.

It's being chipped away, though.

It started innocuously with mandatory emergency signalling in the instance of a crash, then mandatory reversing cameras, then mandatory lane keeping assistance, auto emergency braking, speed limit indication. Coming soon in Europe is automatic speed limit adherence. Emissions regs have also led to a huge rise in automatic transmissions in Europe.

For very many people the only thing they do to control their car now is turn the wheel and push the accelerator.

"Insurance incentivization" is just an alternate form of regulation, instead using the power of an economic market rather than the power of the police to impose someone's regulatory will.

For some reason, Americans seem to be fine with regulations that come from companies and enforced via economics, but become extremely vocal when there regulations come from legislators.

There’s enough of a large group of people to the extent that no party wants to piss them off. Pure and simple.

The US as it stands is a dictatorship, that thankfully, has some checks and balances to control Mr Trump.

One only has to watch that recent White House dinner of the Big Tech figures getting together (minus Scamath) and the forceful nature in which Mr Trump made Zuck and Cook issue statements of large investment amounts.

Nothing of that nature goes in Europe, at least not so blatantly.

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