Welcoming Google's self-driving car and the end of driving

When pictures of the Google autonomous car prototype started flashing through my feed on Tuesday night, I immediately thought: This is it. The car of my dreams has arrived.

It wasn't because of the design. The prototype looks like aTamagotchi, or, at worst, some kind of futuristic suppository. And it wasn't because of the minimal performance details that Google announced. Twenty-five miles per hour is school-zone speed, or empty-parking-lot speed. When I think of autonomous cars – and I think of them a lot when I'm in stalled highway traffic, two miles from home but 30 minutes or more from a cold tall boy – I like to imagine that they can at least approach current highway velocity.

As for the no steering wheel, gas pedal, brake, or gearshift, well, that sounds fine to me as well. Anything that takes guesswork of ordinary commutes can only be a good thing. More often than not, driving is a pain in the seat.