This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm.

That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.

>That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.

Hyperbole? Driving is dangerous, on that we are agreed, but the activity in your example is far, far, far more dangerous. There is obviously some standard of danger at which we no longer ban people from doing things: you aren't allowed to shoot at people, but you are allowed to carry a gun in the first place, and even regardless of your own intention this admits the possibility that someone insane might steal your gun and shoot innocent people.

So I don't think that valuing the freedom to control your own vehicle can be immediately dismissed as absurd. The apparent danger of driving is exaggerated by the astounding safety of modern life: at no point before 1900 did any human enjoy anything remotely approaching a modern standard of safety. In industrialized countries, the vehicle fatality rate is commensurate with or below the suicide rate. The number of people who enjoy the freedom of driving is massive, essentially the entire adult population of those countries, and so this common experience perhaps should not be ignored.

Some of -- but not all of -- the value in freedom is reflected in the potential for damage in non-freedom. If some external agent controls the mobility of the population, the potential for abuse is massive.