What is a driver license?

It’s a cold morning of February. One degree outside, 20 inside says the screen on my car. It’s Monday. I’m heading to a business meeting I have in 10 minutes in the middle of the city. I live in the countryside in a big house, with my beautiful wife, our three wonderful kids, 2 dogs and a cat, Harper. I’m enjoying a coffee while reviewing the papers for the meeting, for the tenth time. I’m pitching our new venture to an investor.

The car stops and says “We have arrived. Your meeting is in floor 37”. I get out of the car and head to the main entrance. I look back and I see the car leaving.

45 minutes later I’m taking the elevator down to the ground floor. The meeting didn’t go very well. Anyway I don’t think this was the right investor for us. I get out of the building and my car is right there, waiting for me. I get in and we head back home.

Listening to some music I let my mind fly. For some reason it comes to my me when cars were driven by people. When you had to pass an exam to get a driver license. Wow! How far is that!

It comes to my mind when roads were full of sign posts. Stop, Give way, No entry, traffic lights, speed limits, no parking, no left turn, no right turn, no U-turn, no turn at all. Thousands, millions of them scattered along billions of kilometers. Not to mention the ones to tell drivers which way to go or how far they were from cities.

People needed to pay insurance to drive a car! Yes, it was mandatory because those days cars had accidents. There were radars and police on the roads to fine speeding drivers. There were accidents caused by drunk drivers. That’s scary. To minimize injuries cars had seat belts and airbags.

Here is a funny one. There were cars with the driving wheel on the right hand side and cars with the driving wheel on the left hand side. Now there is no driving wheel at all, and since there is no driving wheel they cannot be stolen. How cool is that!

Nowadays with cars communicating with each other and with all sort of computer intelligence traffic jams are rare. Since cars are not driven by people they are not restricted to drivers. What I mean is that blind people can jump into a car and go wherever they want. Same goes for elderly, kids or disabled people. Or even no one! You could just send your car to pick up your kids at school or to send a piece of furniture to your sister.

Cars take care of themselves. They go by themselves to the mechanic if they find something needs preventive maintenance. They choose the date and time that doesn’t cause you any inconvenience or they may even go at night. They never get broken on the road and of course they never run out of gas. Cars have no brake or turn lights, these were for people to people communications. It’s great that the annoying horn is gone as well.

You can go to countries you have never been and the car knows how to navigate. You can tell your car to do a touristic tour around a city telling you what to see at every place. You don’t have to worry about parking, they go and park by themselves.

Some people miss Formula 1 competitions. They disappeared when humans were beaten by machines race after race. Likewise a few other professions have disappeared: taxi driver, driving instructors, truck drivers or tractor drivers.

One of the things I like the most is to go hiking and tell the car to pick me up on the other side of the mountain. Not to mention being able to lay down and sleep in my way back home.

It’s hard to imagine how it was when cars had to be driven. Being late to work, traffic jams or having to park the car.

To finalize I have a wish. I hope in the future cars fly. This way we can get rid of roads. Roads won’t need to be constructed or maintained anymore. That will be an enormous saving. And the best thing for the last, there will be no limitations to where you could go.

I want to be in the future!