David Giacalone at f/k/a posts about the newest, most high-techiest thing to hit the highways, the in-car hotspot.

San Jose University business professor Randall Stross raises an important warning in today’s New York Times, with a column titled “Caution: Driver May Be Surfing the Web” (Aug. 24, 2008). You see, Chrysler is about to make its 2009 model cars into internet hot-spots, capable of accessing the web while you enjoy your “living room on wheels” — with a feature it calls UConnect Web.

Now if Chrysler could similarly invent a way that automobiles would drive themselves without need for human attention, this would be brilliant.  Alas, they haven’t, and people will still be required to press pedals and turn wheels to make cars go where they should.  This is a problem.

People can’t drive worth a lick now.  Between cellphones, selfishness and utter carelessness, the road has become a dangerous place.  Sure, we need it and elect to take the risk in order to get where we’re going, but we do so at some significant personal risk.  Each of us figures that while the other driver is a menace, we are cautious and can manage to navigate our way around the bad drivers and arrive safely.  No one ever sees themselves as the bad driver.  It’s always the other person. 

It’s not that vehicular hotspots won’t have their legitimate uses.  For the businessperson who can access the internet from her car while safely parked, it could be a huge boon.  But we know from some experience, ranging from those who have so much to say that it can’t possibly wait until their are stationary, or better yet home, to speak at enormously great length on the cellphone, to those who are enslaved by the crackberry between their legs, twiddling with their thumbs in a gestures that used to get people arrested for public indecency, that people will use this technology while guiding a 5,000 pound missile over pavement at 73 miles per hour.  They just will.

The problem could be resolved by an interlock system that shut off access while a vehicle was in motion, but that would deny junior the ability to cruise porn sites in the back seat and thus keep him quiet for the duration of the trip.  As any modern parent knows, there is no interest as grave as keeping junior pacified while on the road.  If not, the parent might have to speak with the children.  This violates the parental rules of engagement.

But the genius of auto hotspots doesn’t end there.  Consider this:

PCMag.com reports that “the hotspot range will extend approximately 50 feet from the vehicle in all directions, and will combine both WiFi and 3G cellular connectivity.” That means we can also expect tailgaters (and SideGaters?) cruising close to steal the WiFi signal from a moving Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep vehicle.

That’s the best part.  You don’t have to actually own one of those disgusting Chryslers to enjoy the benefits.  You need only cruise behind or aside one to steal the signal.  Can’t you envision people jockeying for position to get aside that Jeep, or nosing your Mercedes between it and the tail-gating Chevy.  Regardless of how well the Chrysler’s driver handles web access, you now need to concern yourself with all other marques “signal-searching” in the fast lane.

If an automobile manufacturer announced that it would hereinafter produce vehicles with windshields that would be completely black for 10 seconds out of every minutes of driving (why would they do that?  How about the tagline, “Bring some challenge back to the road!”), they would be viewed as insane and castigated by at least 60% of the driving public.  But when they accomplish the same thing, but give us that techno-fix that has become our lifeblood, we embrace it as a marvel.

The irony is that groups like MADD, who have so effectively eviscerated a panoply of rights and interests in the name of protecting a relatively small group of potential victims, will do nothing about a novelty like this that will impact far more people than drunk drivers.  It’s not that I’m advocating for people to drive drunk, but for a rational appreciation of proportionality.  Will it be better if 50,000 die in hotspot-related crashes, without a word of protest, while they focus on the 5,000 people injured annually in drunk-driving related incidents?

As far as I can see, there’s little interest in safety on the road, aside from the Myopic Mothers.  Except David Giacalone.  And me.