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OPINION
Sttnes
gainesvilletimes.com
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
Submit a letter: letters@gainesvilletimes.com
The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Autonomous
vehicles should
pass driver’s test
BY JASON LEVINE
The Baltimore Sun
Despite almost daily reports of crashes or non-
responsive technology on public roads involving
driverless cars, Congress is trying to hitch a new
law to Santa’s sleigh in the form of the year-end-
keep-the-government-open spending bill, just
ahead of a new majority come January.
Today, all motor vehicle operators, particularly
commercial drivers, are required to pass a license
examination demonstrating a minimum level of
competence before sharing the road with anyone
else. Yet this driverless car bill has no licensing
requirements for robots and thus no objective
validation tests for vehicle safety before allowing
the sale of potentially hundreds of thousands of
driverless vehicles, all at the behest of, and to the
benefit of, the auto and tech industries.
In addition to not being licensed as safe, if
passed as proposed, the bill would exempt these
computer-driven machines from the liability
that humans face when getting behind the wheel.
When driverless cars crash — either into one of
the 270 million human driven cars already on the
road, or pedestrians or bicyclists — the humans
involved may be out of luck when it comes to legal
protection.
While the bill’s authors claim to have addressed
a liability loophole involving binding arbitration
and other underhanded tactics, there remain hid
den surprises for crash victims. The most egre
gious is the bill’s suspension of arbitration ends
when federal rules are put in place. This is cold
comfort.
Defective Takata airbag inflators, GM ignition
switches and Firestone tires were all also subject
to federal rules, which were obviously violated
resulting in many fatalities. At least their victims
had access to the civil justice system providing an
opportunity to seek their day in court.
There’s even more mischief under the tree in
terms of giveaways to the industry in the bill. Once
steering wheels and brake pedals are removed, it
won’t be long until campfire seating arrives. Ide
ally, such freedom of design could potentially give
those who use wheelchairs and others in the dis
ability community greater access to the wonders
of modern transportation. Except there’s a rea
son vehicles are designed with passengers facing
forward in upright and secured positions: safety.
Current occupant protection standards allow air
bags to deploy and crumple zones to form, saving
thousands of lives annually. The results when we
ignore the lessons of physics are all too clear —
as the nation saw with the stretch limousine crash
earlier this year that killed all 18 occupants of the
vehicle.
Finally, one can only assume the lack of a man
date for collecting and accessing crash data is
intended as a stocking stuffer for manufacturers.
Airplanes, boats and even conventional cars
driven by people have uniform requirements
for data recording when they crash so that objec
tive third parties (in other words, not the manu
facturer) can investigate and figure out what
happened. This will be needed more than ever
in the context of autonomous vehicle technol
ogy to determine if the crash was caused by the
computer, the human operator, the road or even
another car operated by a drunk driver.
Objective information about crashes could
help the industry improve and ensure the public
has confidence in the technology. But this will be
nearly impossible to achieve without uniform data
elements like the ones that exist in modern avia
tion technology. The AV START Act manages to
delegate how much crash data, what data and how
that data is made accessible, to the least objective
party possible — the manufacturer.
At the end of Charles Dickens’ famous tale,
“A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge sees the
error of focusing too much on his short-term self-
interest and embraces the essence of the holiday:
showing goodwill toward all, including the least
among us like Tiny Tim.
There’s still time for Congress to avoid spectral
nighttime visits this Christmas Eve and spread
goodwill by providing a true path for long-term
transportation safety through the responsible
development of driverless car technology. But it
is almost midnight.
Jason Levine is executive director of The Center for
Auto Safety, a Washington, D.C.-based, member-
supported nonprofit advocacy organization. He
wrote this for the Baltimore Sun.
Your government officials
U.S. government
President Donald Ihimp, The White House, 1600
Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20500,
202-456-1111,202-456-1414, fax, 202-456-
2461; www.whitehouse.gov
Sen. Johnny Isakson, 131 Russell Senate Office
Building, Washington, DC 20510,202-224-3643,
fax, 202-228-0724; One Overton Park, 3625
Cumberland Blvd., Suite 970, Atlanta 30339,770-
661-0999, fax, 770-661-0768; isakson.senate.gov
Sen. David Perdue, 383 Russell Senate Office
Building, Washington, DC 20510,202-224-3521,
fax 202-228-1031; 3280 Peachtree Road NE Suite
2640, Atlanta 30303,404-865-0087, fax 404-865-
0311; perdue.senate.gov.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, 1504 Longworth House
Office Building, Washington, DC 20515,202-
225-9893; 210 Washington St. NW, Suite 202,
Gainesville 30501,770-297-3388; dougcollins.
house.gov
U.S. Rep Rob Woodall, 1725 Longworth House
Office Building, Washington, DC 20515,202-
225-4272, fax 202-225-4696; 75 Langley Drive,
Lawrenceville 30045, 770-232-3005, fax 770-232-
2909; woodall.house.gov
High time we confront online
bullies who promote self harm
If you’ve spent any time on
social media, you may have
had the misfortune of coming
up against a cowardly troll
who hides behind a Twitter
handle or Facebook page to
criticize or attack you for any
number of grievances, real or
perceived.
This practice was once
reserved for basement
dwelling social misfits who
seemingly had nothing better
to do with their time than tell people
they don’t know what they think of
their hair or their weight or even their
parenting skills. But it’s leaped into the
mainstream, thanks in no small part to a
president who has made tweet-shaming a
national pastime, and a pitiful one at that.
The worst manifestation of online bul
lying, save for actual death threats, are
the messages urging other people to hurt
or kill themselves.
It’s particularly unimaginable when
it happens to children. Children like
McKenzie Adams, who was urged to kill
herself by classmates at her Alabama
school. She did, eventually, early this
month. She was only 9 years old.
When it happens to celebrities, usually
on behalf of other celebrities, it’s called
“Stan Culture,” after the Eminem song
about a crazed fan.
Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night
Live” came to know this all too well.
After his breakup with pop star Ariana
Grande, Davidson posted
a harrowing and troubling
message on his Instagram
account: “I really don’t want
to be on this Earth anymore.
I’m doing my best to stay
here for you but I actually
don’t know how much longer
I can last. All I’ve ever tried
to do was help people. Just
remember I told you so.”
In return, he got compas
sion, yes. But also a truly
horrifying amount of comments urging
self-harm from people he didn’t know
telling him to go ahead and kill himself.
For those of us with a history of depres
sion and suicide, it was not only deeply
disturbing but maddening — the fragility
of a person confronting dark thoughts
makes them all the more susceptible to
these awful suggestions.
So when an elected official, New York
State Sen. Kevin Parker, a Democrat
who represents Flatbush, Park Slope
and other parts of Brooklyn, told a
Republican staffer “kill yourself!” in a
tweet on Tuesday, it deserves a serious
conversation.
The despicable tweet was in response
to Candice Giove, communications
aide to Senate Republicans; she had
retweeted a tweet showing photos of his
improper use of parking privileges, with
questions of her own.
It’s hard to imagine what prompted
a public official to use social media
to urge someone else to kill herself;
Parker has some anger issues. In 2005,
he was arrested for punching a traffic
agent in the face as he was ticketing his
double-parked car. And in 2010, he was
convicted of criminal mischief for con
fronting a New York Post photographer
outside his home.
But despite deleting the tweet and
apologizing, Parker apparently doesn’t
see the seriousness in his online outburst.
“I don’t know why this is a temper
issue,” he said. “Did I touch her? Did I
yell at her? It was a tweet. That’s all it
was. Had I said this to her in the hallway,
would we be having this conversation?
Probably not.”
Of course, we absolutely would be
having this conversation if a state
senator told a staffer to kill herself in the
hallway.
“It was a tweet. That’s all it was” is a
popular thought bubble among online
cretins, who don’t see the harm in social
media bullying. And it has to stop.
Hopefully, Giove can dismiss Parker’s
offensive suggestion and give it the
consideration it deserves — none
whatsoever.
As for Parker, like our boorish presi
dent, he is clearly a bully who can’t con
trol his anger. His party should urge him
to step down, go away and leave the rest
of us alone, once and for all.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp
Unfiltered” on CNN.
S.E. CUPP
secuppdailynews@
yahoo.com.
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DOU'T
EVENTvM
ABOUT IT.
LISA BENSON I Washington Post Writers Group
Trump’s important new Africa strategy
President Donald Trump
continues to take bold steps,
recapturing America’s
exceptionalism at home and
leadership abroad.
These important develop
ments are too often getting
drowned out by relentless
noise in Washington, where
the media obsess over
many issues concerning
this president except those
most relevant to his job —
his performance leading the nation to
excellence.
A good example is the superlative new
initiative just announced by National
Security Advisor John Bolton establish
ing a new Africa strategy.
The initiative echoes the foreign
policy vision Donald Trump articulated
in his inaugural address.
That is, that America’s relationship
with the nations of the world should be
defined first by our national interests.
“We do not seek to impose our way of
life on anyone,” he said, “but rather to
let it shine as an example for everyone
to follow.”
The Africa initiative is driven by three
components: expanding and building
new trade and commercial ties; contain
ing radical Islamic terrorism and violent
conflict; and assuring that American aid
dollars are used effectively.
Among the concerns of the adminis
tration are aggressive moves by Russia
and China into Africa, whose approach
is far different than ours.
Corrupt regimes are an enormous
problem in Africa. Both Russia and
China see corruption as an opportunity
for commercial gain by buy
ing off regimes and building
debt dependence through
loans.
For instance, China,
according to Bolton, is mov
ing to take over the national
power and utility company
of Zambia to cover billions
of dollars of debt.
The best-known public
measure of corruption is
the Corruption Perceptions
Index published annually by Transpar
ency International.
Countries are graded 1 to 100,100
being corruption free — which, unfor
tunately, is nonexistent. The average
global score is 43. The U.S. score is 75.
The average score in Africa is 32.
China’s scores is 41 and Russia is 29.
It’s clear that neither is motivated to fur
ther African development by cleaning
up corruption. Quite the opposite.
However, disinfectant is not just the
morally right thing to interject into Afri
can politics; it’s also the economically
right thing to do.
Plenty of research and experience
point to the single most powerful potion
for economic development and prosper
ity —economic freedom.
Economic freedom means limit
ing the size and scope of government,
maintaining a reliable system of law and
courts that protect property and con
tracts, keeping regulation to a necessary
minimum, allowing citizens to trade
freely abroad and keeping the nation’s
currency stable.
Average per capita income in nations
that rank in the top 25 percent of eco
nomic freedom is $40,376. Average
income in the bottom 25 percent is
$5,649.
According to the World Bank, average
per capita income in the 48 countries in
sub-Saharan Africa was $1,464 in 2016.
It’s no accident that African nations
that are the most economically free also
have the highest per capita incomes,
such as Botswana, $7,596, and Sey
chelles, $15,505. These also are among
the least corrupt countries in Africa
according to Transparency Interna
tional scores. It stands to reason that
corruption is minimized when citizens
have more freedom to do their own busi
ness and politicians have less power to
interfere.
However, most African nations are
woefully economically restrained,
which is why there is so much corrup
tion and incomes are so low.
The Trump administration is right on
target in advancing both American and
African interests by moving “nations
toward self-reliance and away from
long-term dependency.”
As is generally the case with welfare,
foreign aid is notoriously ineffective and
counterproductive, undermining self-
reliance and fostering dependency.
U.S. aid to Africa in 2017 was $8.7
billion.
The new Africa strategy, by bringing
to bear American ideals, will efficiently
use our taxpayer funds and bring forth
the great, unrealized potential of the
African continent.
Star Parker is an author and president
of the Center for Urban Renewal and
Education and a columnist for Creators.
STAR PARKER
www.urbancure.org
She Stines
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