It was a counterpoint to his sneer, I felt like it was a productive re-contextualization of their narrow viewpoint. I am really surprised people seem to be missing the parent comments snark but not mine, it was really on the nose.

They were mocking someone for choosing to do without technology, it was just a snippy retort. Why aren't you jumping down their throat?

edit: Turns out I was wrong about the parent's intent. For what it's worth, I do actually drive in silence a lot. There is something about a vehicle in transit that temporarily relieves you of responsibilities outside of the drive, and it's a great time to reflect. I could reflect on this comment thread, for example. Two times in the past few months I've been wrong about someone's intent on HN and met them with a little too much spice than was fair, that's worth reflecting on.

I sometimes drive in complete silence. The friction between the tires and the asphalt is close to white noise. It contains a range of high and low frequencies that you can't easily filter out, something that I tried to deal with at a computer vision class project involving self-driving tech. Also it can be amazingly therapeutic.

I drive in silence. I don't understand why some people feel the need to _always_ be listening to something.

I do. Is this unusual?