![]() Robot cars, they say, will let cities tear up parking lots (robots never rest) and replace them with affordable housing. Its proponents tout its potential to save lives, ease traffic, and free us from the scourge of driving. ![]() More than a century later, led by Uber, Lyft, Tesla, and others, Silicon Valley is selling the dream of the driverless car. ![]() A motoring journal expanded on this theme in 1902: “In Europe it is openly recognized that the main excuse for the speed mania is the desire to feel new sensations and juggle away the emptiness of a purposeless life.” Why did he do it? Willie confided to an interviewer that his inherited wealth was “as certain death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.” Racing gave Willie a thrill and excitement his life otherwise lacked. He tore dangerously around the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, but always went free when the police nabbed him. A notorious daredevil among his millionaire set, he once did 92 mph at Daytona in a machine that had the structural integrity of a soapbox derby car. ![]() Many more followed, though the machines were obscenely expensive. A free-spending heir to the Vanderbilt family fortune, William Kissam Vanderbilt II bought his first car in 1899. ![]()
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