A closer look
Ralph Teetor invented modern automotive cruise control in 1948 despite being completely blind since the age of five. He came up with the idea because he was deeply annoyed by his patent attorney's habit of constantly speeding up and slowing down while driving, which made him carsick. This brilliant piece of engineering was born entirely out of a blind man's simmering rage at a sighted person's sheer incompetence behind the wheel. Today, millions of drivers rely on this exact technology so they can legally disengage their brains on the highway, seamlessly maintaining sixty-five miles per hour while texting, eating a burrito, or experiencing an existential crisis. We essentially owe one of the most widely used automated transport features in modern history to a guy who could not even legally operate a vehicle but still knew we were all terrible at it
