U2, Car Pools, and Fish Schools

Years ago I developed a rather complicated in-depth means of discovering whether or not specific people represented a danger to society. I’ve used it for years. I look a person right in the eye and ask, “Do you like U2?”

If they say “yes”, “sorta”, or even “I used to” then I consider them relatively harmless. If however they say “no way”, “I hate U2”, or “I prefer reading books” then I take off running in the opposite direction spilling my emergency bag of tripping-marbles behind me.

The way I see it, people who rebel against the most commonly accepted opinions in our society are either dangerous attention-starved revolutionaries, flesh-eating zombies or hipsters. U2 may not be the best band in the world, but most people would agree that they’re fairly decent. So what kind of person would come out and say they don’t like U2? That’s like saying you don’t like puppies, freshly-baked pie, or toilet humor. Such people are unpredictable radicals (or zombie hipsters).

So imagine my distress when I found myself not liking U2 earlier this week. It all started when I left work. I was whistling a merry tune about puppies eating pie and then laughed about a fart joke I heard earlier in the day. I drove my car out onto the street and immediately came to a halt. All I could see in front of me were other cars, stopped just like me.

I turned on the traffic report and learned that a U2 concert at FedEx Field had completely destroyed the afternoon rush hour. All roads were blocked with scores of rock fans wearing shades that made them appear either cool or having glaucoma. Excitement was at a fever pitch because many of these folks never expected to have a good time at the Redskins stadium. For us working stiffs however, this was a nightmare (late-afternoonmare?). I started thinking to myself, “Who do these guys think they are scheduling a concert at 7 pm on a Tuesday evening in Washington, DC? I’m not so sure I like them anymore.”

It was a sobering moment. Was I at my tipping point? I felt the desire to rebel against authority rise within me, when suddenly a motorist blew past me on the shoulder nearly ripping off my side mirror. That brought me back down. After all, common public opinion would say that that driver was … not right, and I certainly agreed.

Imagine swarms of cars side by side, some inching, others quickly weaving, all going in the same direction. The danger was real, and I saw plenty of fender benders. People and cars are not designed to be in that kind of position for that amount of time and come out safely or sanely. But soon perhaps we will.

A team of researchers in Japan have designed some goofy looking robot cars that may cut the risk of car crashes by mimicking the behavior of fish. If you’ve ever seen a giant school of fish, you’ve probably noticed that despite their close proximity to each other, they never actually hit each other. How can that be? Dark magic you say? Perhaps, or maybe there’s some communication going on between them that we can learn and adapt to our crazy traffic patterns.

The robot cars, which look like creepy sci-fi ghosts, can travel in groups of seven, avoiding any bumps by sharing information collected from lasers and radio communications. Sound promising? I’m not convinced.

Here’s my problem. Schools of fish usually go in the same direction at the same speed, but that’s not reality for human drivers. To really make the comparison that fish are like drivers in DC traffic, fish would need to:

1. Hate each other—How dare those other fish be in front of me? Do they think they’re better than me? That one fish is texting while swimming! I’m going to ride his tailfin and turn on my fishy-dark-magic-enhanced high beams!

2. Hate traveling in schools—Safety in numbers my eye! If only some alien beam could vaporize that annoyingly slow angelfish! Where are the sharks when you need them!

3. Not value their own life—I will weave in and out of all my fishy brethren at speeds that shed my scales from my very skin. If I die, I die going fast.

So this new research is all well and good, but I’ll be much more excited about these robot fish-cars when they learn not only to hate each other, but when they value their trip destination more than their mortal destination. And until then, how cool is it that they look like ninja E.T.'s? I want a green one!