I‘ve written before about what I called The MRA Meme That Would Not Die — that is, the notion that teaching men not to rape is like teaching drivers not to run people over. That it is, in other words, a silly and pointless exercise.

MRAs apparently think this is a devastating argument, and I’ve seen it return again and again, with slight variations, in memes floating around on Facebook and Twitter. Like this one:

What MRAs somehow seem to have forgotten is that we DO in fact teach drivers not to run people over.

That’s what drivers’ ed is for. And that’s why we make wannabe drivers pass a driving test before giving them their licence. If you run over even one pedestrian during such a test, much less plow into a crowd of people waiting for a bus, you will fail this test.

That kind of makes sense to me. As does teaching men not to rape. (Which also works, by the way.)

Well, now I’ve found a new variation on the Meme That Would Not Die, focusing not on drivers but on the cars themselves:

Sorry to ruin your memes again, MRAs, but WE DO THIS ALREADY TOO. Well, not so much teach them as program them to not hit people. That’s what collision avoidance systems are all about.

If you want to know more, Toyota has prepared a helpful video.

Meanwhile, assorted carmakers — and Google — are working on self-driving cars; Business Insider estimates there will be ten million of them on the road by 2020, each of every one of them programmed not to hit people.

Except this one, of course:

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