Driverless Cars

This piece on driverless cars in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (http://www.startribune.com/streetscapes-driverless-cars-will-have-big-impact-on-city-streets/306282691/) garnered a lot of discussion that may be more informative than the article itself. I am not surprised by the reaction of people who defend their right to drive cars; the same kind of reactions occurred, as I write in the piece, when cars began to usurp horse-drawn vehicles over a hundred years ago. But the way in which some people simply dismiss the fact of driverless cars or shoot the messenger bringing them this news shows how at least part of the reading public lives either in a fact-free world or chooses to ignore facts that make them uncomfortable. As James Schlesinger is attributed to have said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."