Re: Motorcycle blues
"Technology improves, yes. But laws rarely evolve for the better in a motoring context."
But laws rarely evolve, period, in a technology context. Especially in the scientifically illiterate United States, which equates everything inexplicable by the common folk to miracles and magic (and brands anyone who mentions science as a godless communist). Don't quote me on this, but I wouldn't doubt if a good chunk of our surveillance laws govern whether or not the Pinkerton Agency has the authority to ride behind equestrian letter-carriers of the Pony Express. Pretty sure the copyright laws must cover 8-track tapes, Betamax, and transistor radios too. The last major update to the wire-tapping laws occurred under Reagan, talking about the "burgeoning portable telephone technology" or something to that effect. (The "brick," remember those?)
New York just now is moving to get rid of horse-drawn carriages -- not on the grounds that they're outdated, but on grounds of animal cruelty. (Shades of a certain Seinfeld episode about force-feeding the poor creature.) A reason I can nevertheless support, but I still believe the point about American Luddism is well-taken. No doubt the laws will take years to catch up with Google cars. They're written for rickshaws, Hannibal's war elephants, and chariots with literal "horse power."
Congress, after all, takes millennia to get things passed that don't serve their own (or their lobby friends') interests. The healthcare act, for example, wasn't about helping sick people pay for health insurance. It was, at its core, about expanding the customer base of private insurance companies. Self-serving crony capitalism is why we in the States will never have an NHS. (But I digress.)