Self Driven Cars Making Dreams Come True

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Four hours into a 19-hour drive home from our annual family vacation in Florida, I wake up, stretch my arms and take a look out my window to see Georgia flying by. I casually decide to take out my iPad to catch up on the latest season of Homeland, look to my right and behind me to see the rest of my family is quietly napping while I’m behind the wheel, only I’m not in control of the car. It’s on autopilot.

I snap out of my daydream. I’ve gone four hours into a 19-hour drive. It feels like I’ve listened to the same four light rock songs on Sirius’ 70s station. There is no hope for rest. Everyone is napping around me. I want to wake them up to share my pain. All I have to look forward to is two hours from now we’ll drive through Greenville, SC, and if I’m lucky we’ll pass an exit with a Sonic so I can get a pineapple milkshake. This is only the beginning of a very, very long trip.

It’s long since been my dream to have a car that drives itself. I thought it was a silly dream until I saw Minority Report and their world of self-driven cars (they were Lexus of course). I mean if Tom Cruise doesn’t have to drive in the future, why should I?
According to an article I read on Yahoo News “Driverless Cars May Save Baby Boomers’ Driving Privileges”  and we’re not so far away from the reality of self driven cars. The cars will be equipped with a laser scanner and sensors that will provide feedback to an onboard computer, so all you’d have to do is input your destination, and off you go.

To me the possibilities are endless, not only for long family road trips in which you could leave at night, sleep and arrive to your destination fresh in the morning, but also for safety, with late-night drinking and driving eventually becoming something we no longer need to worry about.

One can only imagine what other dreams will come true with the continuously increasing engineering marvels that once only seemed to exist in the movies.