I foresee a change in driving in the future. It’s not so far into the future where we have flying cars, but this is more of what I think will be next for our roads (to be more exact, our highways). Imagine driving on the road, you’re heading towards the highway entrance ramp. As you approach, your vehicle dings through your speakers. You begin to make your turn on the ramp and a voice lowers your speaker volume and says “destination”. Meanwhile a highway computer is calculating your entrance to the highway and begins moving cars (in the lane nearest you) over, in anticipation for your entry. The steering wheel and your petals all lock into place, the computer is taking over the navigation and operation of your vehicle.
You state your destination, “Par street exit, Orlando”. The computer then confirms or rejects your destination “destination confirmed”. Then you just sit back relax, do some reading or watch a movie as you reach your exit. You notice that there are no traffic jams even though you are in the middle of what normally would have been rush hour. The computer intelligently controls all traffic and you no longer have to deal with that, what I like to call, “slinky effect”. The slinky effect is where the front car gets slowed down and when it begins to move up to speed again, the acceleration takes a while to get to your car. This to me always ended up looking like a slinky.
About five minuets before you reach your exit destination you hear that same ding and a voice over the speakers stating “approaching destination, five minuets remain”. Then again two minuets from the destination your seat vibrates and you get the instructions “prepare to exit”. Once it takes you to your exit, you will need to acknowledge you understand the controls will be given back to you by pushing a button located in your vehicle (somewhere where you wouldn’t accidently hit it). Once this button is pushed on the exit ramp, it will restore full control to you when it stops at the stop sign at the end of the ramp.
If you don’t push the button when you are required to, the computer pulls you off to the side of the exit ramp and parks your car until you push the button. The side of the exit ramp will be something similar to a pickup area at an airport where you pull your car off to the side behind the other cars in a line. Once this happens it sends out reminders every minute. After five minutes the highway computer dials a road service to come out and make sure everything is okay and/or possibly issue a ticket.





