[Guest post by Pete Tonery]

Most people pray they’ll win the lottery but I’m pretty sure even God can’t beat the odds on Powerball. So I set my sights a little lower — I only want the All Mighty to bestow a driverless car on me.
A driverless car! Think of it- you climb in, tell it your destination and off you go! Down the road, onto the expressway, exit into the city and get dropped off at the front door. The little car scurries away to find its own parking place and when you want it back you summon it with your mobile. By the time you reach the sidewalk the car is waiting.

OMG, doesn’t that sound great?! I consider 95% of the time I have spent in cars to be completely wasted. (The 5% was spent “parking” in my youth. That time was NOT wasted.) Driving is an obnoxious, aggravating waste of the brain. Often when I’m driving I think of the other things I could be doing: Reading for example, or writing or watching baseball, cruising the internet or sending annoying emails.
An article in the NYT said the DOT estimates that 30% of city driving is spent looking for a parking place! Seriously, it’s like a BILLION miles each year. A billion miles not just wasted, but wasted getting cranked up and pissed off; resulting in a foul mood!

Driving must waste 100 billion person hours a day in lost productivity. Time wasted steering a 1-2 TON of fossil fuel-powered steel, rubber and plastic to the grocery store 4.5 miles away or 25 minutes to some depressing shopping mall. It’s all lost time, lost energy, lost productivity. Driving, your brain has been engaged in a stream of pointless, useless activity that returns nothing to you or humankind. Civilization derives no benefit whatsoever when I drive to the city.

This must be the single biggest drain of human potential ever!

Think about it, millions upon millions of people investing their consciousness and mental focus on a stupid act of self transportation. This must be the single biggest drain of human potential ever! More than all the wars in history, more than the humming mindlessness of grade school classrooms in spring, more even than all the billions of hours of brain numbing drivel on television. Only one other activity could rival it- daydreaming and fantasizing. Still, I’ll bet the numbers don’t come close and at least the dreamer is richer for the experience. The driver is just fatigued, frustrated, often angry and, if the AC croaks, hot.

There’s nothing you can do about it either. When you drive, unless you want the journey to end in a bang, you MUST pay attention to what you’re doing. If one has any survival instincts the brain will switch into that animal state of defensiveness. All your muscle memory kicks in and the brain becomes an environmental sponge. Driving is an experience reminiscent of an animal in the wild. All senses are alert, wary, looking for the predator; where is the threat, how can I escape. Children enjoy experiences like that, it’s hide & seek, but driving carries a legitimate life or death aspect. Be alert or be harmed. That is how the brain is supposed to operate while driving; solving problems, reading , writing and texting are excluded. Multitasking in the car is a dangerous myth.
Imagine what else you could direct your brain to do if it wasn’t so occupied!

Dear God, please send me a driverless car. I’ll never ask for anything again.

In the westernmost town in Monroe County, Hamlin, 85%+ of employed people drive 31 miles each way to work on average. In bigger cities like LA, Houston, Boston, Chicago, it is ordinary for people to have a 60 mile commute one way.

All of that time, all of that potentially productive brain activity is wasted simply trying to get from point A to point B. Extrapolate that across the world! Imagine how civilized we could be if all that potential had been put to good use; Humankind would enjoy universal health care, world peace, the demise of fast food and frosted toaster “cakes,” and a simple solution for all relationship problems. I have no doubt about it.

Dear God, please send me a driverless car. I’ll never ask for anything again. I promise I’ll do good with it. I’ll be productive. I’ll write, I’ll work, I’ll create and learn a new hobby, and I promise I won’t just use it to sleep an extra half hour. Not every day.