Actually, your worldview is wrong, and mine is right, and driving is a human right that is not contingent on giving up privacy rights, right to not have your car searched, or other rights.

If you have your own private motorway or racetrack with no one else on it, fine. But operating a vehicle on public streets and highways is a privilege. Not being run over by your drunk ass--that's a human fucking right.

You seem so angry at the notion that somebody might have a different view than yours.

Maybe he got a little annoyed being spoken to by someone so smug they used the line "your worldview is wrong, and mine is right" without trying to be funny.

My entire original reply was about philwelch blithely spouting his opinion as if it were relevant at all and that jmccree needed to hear it. It's a blatant replication of his smugness.

That's not how it came across to me at least. His reply came across as a reasonable part of a discussion, and you came across as being a total asshole. Your assertion it was a "blatant replication of his smugness" just reinforces that impression to me.

If that's not the impression you want to give, you might want to reconsider your approach.

I'm not interested in people's impressions of me (and it doesn't bother me a bit if they think I'm an asshole -- I guess I'm just selfless that way).

That doesn't make you selfless, that makes you selfish, because you only care about what you think of your self and ignore what others think of you.

Enjoy it while the delusion of being right lasts!

Actually, his worldview closely matches the world out there, and yours doesn't, so technically his worldview is right.

Are you serious?

Where did you get the idea that driving is a human right?

Perhaps from the UN? "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State."

In the US, for probably 90% of the country there is no easily accessible public transit, cabs are financially infeasible for the working class, and attempting to walk down roads without sidewalks is very dangerous, and outright illegal for interstates and some highways. For a large percentage of the population, taking away the "privilege" of driving would entirely remove their right to move about the country freely.

When there is no alternative to driving to reach a grocery store, your place of employment, etc. can it really be considered a privilege?

By that reasoning, people who either can't afford cars or can't be trusted with them (DUI convicts) have no ability to travel freely. There are lots of infrastructure changes that should be made to fix that problem, so enshrining the right to drive cars around is neither a complete solution nor an especially efficient or safe one.

Not being able to afford a car is an entirely different matter from the government forbidding you from driving one. As for DUI offenders etc, once they've served their sentence they should have the right to drive like anyone else. During their jail or probation sentence, obviously they forfeit many civil rights.

It's a far easier problem economically to focus on those who can't afford a car than to build out public transportation networks. Perhaps in the future when there are driverless cars everywhere, driving could be a privilege. As it is now, and for the foreseeable future, driving is a requirement for many americans. I moved to a city with public transit to avoid driving, but not everyone has that option, and it's important to remember that.

> It's a far easier problem economically to focus on those who can't afford a car than to build out public transportation networks.

That's a very shortsighted statement. The costs of universal driving in terms of property damage, human injury and death, unproductive time spent commuting, traffic, inefficient urban design, resource expenditure, road maintenance, etc. are significantly higher than those of public transit.

And if you don't believe me about people who simply can't afford to drive, what about people who physically can't drive, like the blind? Or people who physically shouldn't drive, but are sometimes forced to do so, like people who suffer from narcolepsy or get intermittent seizures?

The only reason people don't have the option of avoiding driving is because of poor public infrastructure decisions and in some cases poor personal decisions when we can easily afford to do otherwise. Why do we make these poor decisions? Because we think driving our fat asses around in 5000-pound behemoths is a "right" that needs to be accomodated everywhere, but walking and cycling aren't. It's not science fiction--people managed to do without cars for thousands of years.

Setting all of that aside, if you're operating a motor vehicle that could easily kill people out of inattention, you're putting the public at risk and you have a responsibility to demonstrate you can do so competently and responsibly. Not being killed by cars is a more important right.

Use your brain and try thinking of one of the many plausible ways one might come up with that opinion.

Blunt force trauma?