Nissan Pivo 3 concept car

I've never liked driving. I failed my driving test 3 times - passed on the fourth. I've had some fender benders - I have trouble concentrating on details like other cars and pedestrians. I used to be a pizza driver in the 80s - and on a delivery, I ran over a dog one dark snowy night. I hate driving.

But anyway … about those self-driving cars. They're coming. They really, really are. And when they do it's going to change society in ways we can't even imagine. Try a few of these scenarios on:

Short to medium-range commuter airlines will be disrupted because people will prefer to drive. Hop in your double bunkbed equipped van around bedtime in LA and tell your car to wake you up when you arrive at the hotel in Phoenix. A family of four will comfortably travel for 10 hours, asleep for the cost of a charged battery/ tank of gas - versus four expensive plane tickets costing many times that.

Dropping the kids off at school become not a chore at all. Pile them in, lock the doors and wave goodbye as the car safely shuttles them to campus.

Parking becomes a non-issue. Have your car drop you off in the city and go park somewhere sparse. Give it a call when you're ready to be picked up.

Not all disruptions will be positive. Expect suburban sprawl to increase. It's easier to live four hours from your job when you can sleep in your bunk on the way to work.

Expect taxi drivers to be out of a job.

This all seems like far-out science fiction, I know - until it isn't. The future has a way of sneaking up on us and the self-driving car is closer than we think.

Google has built on the work completed by DARPA. By most accounts, the Google car technology is mature enough to get you from point A to point B.

Recently Google lobbied Nevada to be the first state to change its road rules, allowing driverless cars to share the road with human operated ones. The legislation passed and it's expected that other states will soon follow suit.

There was initially an expectation that Google would partner with car companies in Detroit to get "Google drive" added as a feature to upcoming cars - this appears to have fallen through with Google reportedly being "unimpressed by Detroit's entrepenureal spirt". The plan now may be for a Google to create their own autonomous car, perhaps a "white label" overseas car that can be branded a Google vehicle - in a similar fashion to the Google branded Nexus phones.



However, the first commercially available autonomous car will not be from Google but Mercedes. The 2013 S Class Mercedes comes with a self-drive feature that is completely hands-free in heavy traffic. It's managed by a cluster of cameras and radar. The catch is that it only operates up to 25 miles an hour. Look for that speed to go up, year by year - and the availability to widen to cheaper cars each year as well.

The fact is that most major car makers are working on self-drive vehicles to some degree. To date though they've been tepid, half-measures. Self-parking features or collision avoidance. None of the traditional car makers are willing to upset the applecart. Cars are sold to be driven with feature lists designed to appeal to people who like the thrum of a turbo charger vibrating their ass in their faux-recaro seats. When traditional car companies do envision true self-driving vehicles, it's often as a far-off distant future LCD wet dream like this Toyota promotion.

It may take a "non-car" company like Google to disrupt these dinosaurs and show them that the future is closer than they think - no Tron-esque cyberscpapes required.

You've probably heard the urban myth about the old guy who buys a Winnebago. He drives it new off the lot, gets on the freeway and turns on the cruise control. He then gets up to go make a coffee - wrecks and presumably spills coffee all over himself. There's a reason that story has resonance; It makes sense. It's intuitive. Cruise control should let you get up and make yourself a cup of Joe. I'm saving up for it. I should be ready by 2020.