There was a time, legend has it, when a driver was considered a person capable of operating a vehicle using a combination of skill, awareness, and a driver’s license. A document explicitly confirming one’s ability to steer a machine without needing twelve electronic nannies, three therapists, and a choir of bleeping angels monitoring every twitch of the steering wheel.
Fast-forward to the European Union in 2025, and congratulations: we now live in a world where your car will warn you, scold you, beep at you, blink at you, and gently (or not so gently) correct your steering because you dared — YOU MONSTER — to drive like an actual adult.
🚨 Speed Limit Warning: The new European Lullaby
You exceed the speed limit by 1 km/h?
BEEP BEEP!
Gravity pulls you 2 km/h faster on a downhill road?
BEEEEEP!
A misread traffic sign because a bug flew in front of the camera?
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Because nothing says “safety” like a surprise cardiac event. This isn’t a warning system. This is an abusive relationship dressed up as legislation.
🍼 Congratulations, You are now an Infant
Modern cars warn you if:
- You change lanes without the car’s written permission
- You get too close to a vehicle (which may be in the next postal code area)
- You might someday perhaps consider potentially colliding with something
- You dare to steer in a way the algorithm does not approve of
At this point, why do we even have driving licenses? Just hand out EU-certified pacifiers and call it a day.
I have nothing against Autonomous Driving, BUT…
Let’s be clear: Many of us have absolutely nothing against autonomous driving or competent driver-assist systems. If a vehicle can truly operate itself from A to B without constant human input, then wonderful: Take the wheel and enjoy your moment, dear robot. But this halfway dystopia we are living in now? Where either I take responsibility for driving or the car does, yet instead we get:
A nagging co-driver made of software, forever interrupting, correcting, scolding, and second-guessing?
No, thank you.
This becomes absurdly annoying when travelling with a rental car, where you:
- Don’t know the interface
- Don’t have time to read 480 pages of digital manuals
- Don’t want to spend 20 minutes buried in menus trying to disable lane-keep babysitting mode
- Often can’t deactivate some systems even if you tried with ancient forbidden magic
Nothing says “holiday spirit” like your rental car shrieking at you on a Spanish country road because you dared to overtake a tractor.
🎄 The Singing Christmas Tree Experience
In many cities, there’s a famous Christmas attraction: The Singing Christmas Tree. Children stand in a giant tree-shaped stage and sing carols. It’s lovely. Driving a modern EU-blessed car feels the same—except instead of joyful children, it’s warning chimes:
🔔 Speeding!
🔔 Lane departure!
🔔 Hands on wheel!
🔔 Driver attention low!
🔔 Collision maybe in an alternate universe!
These cars don’t drive anymore. They perform a symphony of anxiety.
Somewhere in Brussels…
Somewhere, in a fluorescent-lit office in Brussels, there was a meeting where someone said:
“What if we make cars BEEP constantly until drivers develop a facial twitch?”
And everyone else nodded like it was the invention of penicillin.
The Future of Driving
If this continues, future cars will:
- Refuse to start unless you pass a digital initiative test
- Interrupt phone calls to remind you that driving joy violates EU Stability Directive 92/EC
- Auto-report you for reckless enjoyment of mobility
🏁 Final Thoughts
At this point, I don’t want a calm discussion, a citizen feedback form, or a 400-page policy explanation. I want names. I want to know exactly who, in the sprawling EU bureaucracy, woke up one morning and decided:
“Drivers should suffer.
Let their cars scream at them like malfunctioning nursery robots.
Let no journey remain peaceful.
Safety über alles!”
I want to meet this person. Not for a polite handshake, not for a photo opportunity, but for a very intense and unforgettable conversation in which I express my gratitude for this legislation with the emotional force of two perfectly well-aimed metaphors that land with the precision of a heavyweight punch — purely linguistically, of course (on second thought, I’m not so sure about that).
Because whoever pushed this through must be the same genius who said:
“What if PET bottle caps never come off? People love that!”
There is a specific type of mind that looks at a functioning world and says: “How can I make daily life measurably worse?”
And I genuinely want to understand what childhood toy produced this outcome. So please, EU documents, committee papers, legislative records: Show yourself. Give us the hero, the architect, the mastermind of this rolling circus of beeping metal rage.
I promise:
I will thank them personally.
The kind you still feel a week later.
Just my 5 cents.
//Alex
alexreusch 