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In other news, New York tops the list for showerless ones

By Ed Goldman

This is a cry for help. What are we to make of the fact that Phoenix, Arizona—where you can walk into a bar with a visible sidearm—is now the undisputed leader of American cities for driverless taxis?

Maybe you’re thinking, “So what’s the connection, Pal? I’m supposed to be multi-tasking, not figuring out riddles.” Well, I’m really not sure, you magnificent captain of industry.  It just seems like:

– If your friends deduce you’ve had too much to drink in a Phoenix bar (after you challenged the karaoke machine to a gunfight) and decide to send you home in a driverless cab, whom (or what) will you brag to about your near-exploit (out-drawing an unarmed mechanical device)? Whom (or what) will you tell you’re not drunk, that you’re just an allergy sufferer who moved to the desert for your health? And when your driverless car pulls up to your mobile home, will you try to convince it you own the entire trailer park but spend the occasional night there “just to kinda check up on things”?

– If there’s no cab driver, are you expected to provide the requisite body odor, impenetrable patois and bizarre conspiracy theory in his place —“I tell ya, man, the entire U.S. Congress is made up of Venusian puffins wearing human costumes”?

– You won’t be able to object if your non-driver takes you seven miles out of the way to inflate the fare. If you refuse to pay at the end of the ride, the cab can lock its own doors and summon the police (who also carry visible sidearms, by the way). Worse yet, it can release body odor through its vents and play an endless loop of Nicki Minaj’s self-produced mix tapes.

Driverless cabs are apparently a welcome change for some. “Women,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “tend to appreciate not having an unknown person ferrying them late at night, especially after a night of drinking…and men like the freedom to be loud or curse in the car.”

Let’s review. A woman will feel safer in a car that may drive itself to a remote area and use an ejector seat to propel the inebriated woman through the moonroof, thereby stranding her in the middle of nowhere (or, as it’s also known, Phoenix)?