Politicians and assorted others who like to poke around in people’s personal lives have been obsessed with the automobile almost since the first crude vehicles bounced onto rutted paths littered with horse dung.

The car, then as now, seems to annoy certain people.

(Thought it almost never stops people from owning at least one.)

Among the more vexing attributes I think, is the freedom that the vehicle conveys on the common rabble.

A laborer in a Model T, after all, was effectively as mobile, in the era before private jets, as an oil tycoon.

But also, it seems to me, the killjoys and the sourpusses were repelled by the enthusiasm that Americans immediately showed for the personal car.

More than a century later, some people still abhor the notion that everyone ought to be able to drive where they want, when they want, without at least tacit approval from their ostensible superiors.

It’s unseemly, all this unfettered movement.

This attitude has led to a litany of laws intended to rein in the teeming masses.

Some are eminently sensible.

The notion, for instance, that cars should be sold without seatbelts seems ridiculous today.

Laws requiring other lifesaving equipment such as airbags, antilock brakes and traction control also strike me as reasonable.

But from the beginning, even when cars couldn’t keep up with a fleet horse, the busybodies have focused on speed.

Speed limits are almost as old as the automobile, dating to a Connecticut law in 1901. Until recently, the emphasis remained on similar laws, with miles per hour being the dominant statistic.

But technology, as with so many other aspects of society, has effected considerable change on the auto industry.

And it was inevitable that people uncomfortable with the freedom that cars bestow on citizens would seek to deploy the immense power of computers to erect obstacles.

In this case the Europeans are the instigators.

As of July 2024, new cars sold in the 27 countries that make up the European Union must include a device that alerts drivers, through a noise or a vibration, when they exceed the posted speed limit. Drivers can override the warning, but they have to do so every time they start the car since the devices default to active when the engine is turned off.

California is the first U.S. state to try to emulate the EU.

Recently the State Assembly approved Senate Bill 961. If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bill, the new law would require carmakers to install similar speed limit warnings in vehicles sold or made in the state starting in 2030.

(The law wouldn’t apply to motorcycles or emergency vehicles.)

The California law requires cars to display an audio and visual alert when drivers exceed the posted limit by more than 10 mph.

Proponents contend the law will save lives.

Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk San Francisco, described the warning system as “intelligent speed assistance.”

George Orwell would have used that term had he thought of it.

The implication is that drivers are too stupid to be allowed to decide how fast to drive without the aid of “intelligent” machines.

Of course some drivers are stupid.

Which is to say they are reckless.

But recklessness and speed, although they sometimes coincide, are not synonymous.

Yet those who promote laws such as the one in effect in the EU and the one pending in California seem to believe the situation is simple, and that the solution is a digital nanny that caterwauls whenever the speedometer needle passes the midpoint of the gauge.

I would much rather the politicians make people demonstrate more than a rudimentary aptitude for driving before they’re issued a license.

I understand the temptation to use the cudgel of the law, no matter that it’s incapable of distinguishing between the responsible but rapid motorist and the idiot who, to borrow from the greatest of auto gadflies, Ralph Nader, is unsafe at any speed.

We were in Bend recently to watch a volleyball tournament.

On a mild late summer evening, a little after dusk, we walked from the Deschutes River to our motel. Bend, as you surely noticed if you’ve driven there in the past couple decades, has gone in for roundabouts in a big way.

As we trudged along the sidewalk we heard the metallic scream of an engine revved to near its redline (or, possibly, past).

A BMW four-door SUV went past at a speed that surely was at least twice the posted limit of 35 mph. The vehicle circled the next roundabout and roared past in the opposite direction at, if anything, an even higher speed.

The driver repeated this felonious route three times.

I was appalled.

The stunt would have been dangerous at any time, but it was especially reckless after dark. Had a pedestrian — or a deer, of which we saw several — stepped onto the street it would have been physically impossible for the car to stop in time.

The difference between this driver, and someone exceeding the speed limit on a freeway in daylight, in good weather and with little traffic, is dramatic.

Yet legislative remedies, such as California’s SB 961, are ignorant of this distinction. They shunt all drivers into the same roster of shame, people who need “intelligent assistance.”

This path, of course, leads inexorably to vehicles that don’t need human intervention and, if the whiners have their way, would reject it even if offered.

In other words, vehicles which no longer bear any meaningful resemblance to the automobile.

A self-driving car is little more than a washing machine with four wheels.

And as much as I appreciate my appliances, I never daydream about the places beyond the horizon where they can take me, the richness they can add to my life.

A car is only a machine, too.

But it empowers a person, allows him to be an individual capable of inspiration, guided by a soul rather than a microprocessor.