Home And Away

With autonomous cars hitting the roads soon (hopefully), it could mean that your commute – or even your road trip – will feel as though you’ve never even left your living room.

- Daryl Lee

Home, as the old saying goes, is where the heart is. And by ‘old saying’, we do mean old.

It’s difficult to ascertain the exact origins of the phrase, but some have attributed it to Pliny the Elder of ancient Greece, making it some 2,000 years old. A more recent (and we use that term loosely) version appears in the 1800s and it goes something along the lines of, ‘‘Tis home where e’er the heart is”.

Of course, all those utterances were mumbled long before the invention of the automobile, and while it’s difficult to verify, I’d wager that Pliny wouldn’t have reckoned with how much time we spend in cars today.

According to one study, the average American spends a total of 18 days in their cars every year. Naturally, your mileage might vary, but it’s sobering to think that out of every year, we spend half a month just riding or driving around in our cars.

But for the longest time, there hasn’t been much to do in a car. Beyond operating it, listening to the radio or making conversation with other passengers, there was a dearth of potential activity once you were ensconced in your metal cylinder.

All that changed with the advent of modern infotainment systems – now a mainstay of nearly any vehicle – making it such that you can now play videos, music and even stream media from the Internet in your car.

And while we’re just getting used to the notion of our cars being smartphones on wheels, another seismic change is about to hit us – that of the autonomous car.