Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/818577
Voices 10 | Overdrive | May 2017 The Mid-America Truck- ing Show is the year's first big truck show. We always look forward to coming out of winter like a couple of cocoon-weary butter- flies to stroll around under the big lights and see tons of shiny stuff. Such shows are our family reunions — the only occasions beyond the road where we all take time to do something other than have trucks. This year we saw Lee Greenwood perform "God Bless The USA" at the Red Eye Radio party. Of course I cried. You'd have to be a heartless jerk to listen to that song, with Greenwood 20 feet away, singing it like he means it, and not tear up at least a little. Unfortunately, no one has developed an app to keep me from saying dumb things to famous people when I get a chance to speak to them. The only thing I could think to tell Greenwood was that he made me cry. Because that's exactly what famous people who perform for a living want to hear. "Hi, you make me cry." Wonderful, Wendy, could you go over to the corner and lick a window, please? I'm no good under pressure. I'm much better when I can sit down and write things, except that 99 percent of the time I'm writing them about events after the fact, and they're actually consid- ered "apologies" and not "blog posts." What I meant to say, Mr. Greenwood, is that your performance in- spired me to tears and did indeed make me proud to be an American. I'm sorry all I could articulate was "You make me cry." Dang. James Bridle of Britain is the rare artist who's also technologically adept, having worked on his own version of open-source software code for an autonomous vehicle. As he prepared for a solo exhibition that opened recently in Berlin, the exhibition's working title at press time was Failing to Distinguish Between a Tractor Trailer and the Bright White Sky. Most readers would recognize this reference to a major cause of the fatal accident in Florida in which a Tesla's Autopilot function was engaged in a car that went under a white dry van, killing the auto's driver. One exhibition piece, "Autonomous trap," reflects Bridle's cheeky expres- sion of the tension between technolo- gy's limits and the human passion for invention. The video shows a car driving into a trap – dual circles of salt, the outer circle drawn in a dotted line, on a road leading up to Mount Parnassus, home of the mythological muses in Greece. In conversation with Vice magazine, Bridle explained that salt circles are a "traditional form of protection from within or without in magical practice." According to Vice, here's how Bridle sees the connection between the image and technology's growing impact on transportation: "It could be mischievous hackers disrupting a friend's self-driving ride home; the police seizing a dissident's getaway vehicle; highway robbers trap- ping their prey." Or perhaps a good illustration of the hopes and fears of a great many truckers as goes the future of such vehicles. Wendy Parker chronicles her journey on the road with her owner-operator husband, George, in the George and Wendy Show blog on OverdriveOnline.com. Scan the QR to read more from her on your phone or tablet. Art imitates life – and death: An 'Autonomous trap' When Overdrive reached out to artist James Bridle via intermediaries to find out whether his humorous autonomous trap worked on trucks, the answer came back in due course: "Yes, it will absolutely work on trucks." When cheers turn into tears Lee Greenwood, who's had many country music hits in his long career, is best known for "God Bless the USA."