should driving be a priority among the blind?

Regarding the recent flap over the National Federation of the Blind's research into developing a car that blind people can drive. 

 

How the NFB chooses to spend their resources and energy is their business not ours.  But like Democrats and Republicans, we are often quick to criticize one another, just because. 

Now, having said all that in the way of a disclaimer, I personally think that it is one of the silliest uses of anyone's money that we've ever come up with. 

This one person one car, or pickup truck, is no longer sustainable.  We think that our present way of life will just go on forever.  We seem to believe that urban sprawl, super freeways, gas guzzling smelly piles of tin and grease are the natural way of things. 

The fact of the matter is that in our human history, this way of life is an anomaly. 

This so called modern development has not been brought about by good planning or concern over our human future, not to mention the future of our planet and all life, it has been driven by Greed.  Progress has been measured by how many cars are cranked off the production lines, how many new housing developments have been stuck on fertile farmland, how many airplanes and airports connect the cities of the world. 

And we blind people buy right on into this attitude of, Me for Me First.  We want what everybody else has, so we can be just like them, Normal!  Normal?  Let's put a car in every garage and a gun on every hip.  Think of a billion Chinese and another billion Indians covering their farmlands with freeways and housing projects and garages full of cars. 

In my short lifetime our nation has grown from 125,000,000 to something around 300,000,000 people.  When I started life in 1935, most of us lived on farms and in small towns.  But Greed, hiding behind the name of Progress soon changed all of that.  And here we are, wanting to be part of it rather than working to put some common sense back into our nation's heads. 

We really could become the Blind leading the blind.  We could begin talking about a more liveable world for all people.  Or we can all line up to take our turn "driving" our very own car down that road paved with good intentions. 

 

Curious Carl