In July, my wife and I became a minivan family. With three kids, two car seats, too many of our son’s friends needing a ride from practice, and a squirrelly dog, our current vehicles could no longer contain the chaos of our growing tribe. Shortly after joining this elite club of Parents Who No Longer Care How Cool They Look on the Road, we decided to put our character to the test by taking a road trip from Austin, Texas, to Ontario, Canada.

After thirty hours in a vehicle, my fruits of the spirit—particularly my patience, kindness, and gentleness—were withered on the vine. Nevertheless, in between a pinched nerve in my neck, the endless diaper changes of our two children under three, and the never-ending snack requests from behind me, the trip afforded a few quiet moments of reflection. Reflection, that is, on the features of our new minivan and the advent of driverless vehicles.

Despite its many haters, the minivan is without a doubt the Swiss Army knife of family transportation. Our specific van, the 2025 Kia Carnival, is advertised as “blending SUV-inspired styling with minivan practicality.” Okay, I guess I still care a little bit about being in a coolish-looking vehicle. Additionally, the Carnival features a “robust 287-horsepower 3.5L V6 engine, and 260 lb-ft of torque.” I don’t entirely know what that means, but it sounds impressive. It seats up to eight, with a “7-passenger configuration available that features second row ‘VIP Lounge Seats’ with leg extensions.” None of this is necessary for my children, whose legs barely reach over their seats, but I remain sufficiently satisfied with this fact as well as the fact that we now have a “towing capacity of 3500 pounds and cargo space of 145 cubic feet.”

Technologically, the minivan comes with features I did not even know existed, let alone ones that I did not know I needed. For instance, there are dual 12.3-inch panoramic curved displays for “the instrument cluster and infotainment” together with a Bose Premium Audio System. There are power sliding rear doors, a “smart power” liftgate, and in-cabin intercoms and cameras so front-seated passengers can communicate with rear-seated passengers.

Finally, Kia spared no expense in developing the Carnival’s multiple safety features conveniently named “Assists”:

• Standard Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist
• Lane Keeping Assist
• Blind-Spot Collision-Avoidance Assist
• Rear Cross-Traffic Alert Assist
• Highway Driving Assist (Adaptive Cruise Control with Lane-Centering Assist)
• Surround View Monitor Assist (360-Degree Camera System)

I did not think too much of these safety features. And not thirty minutes into our drive to Canada, it was clear these features did not “think” too much of my driving either.

I believe that I am a good driver. But when I drive and talk at the same time, I tend to drift out of my lane. Routinely, my wife Maria will place a hand on my shoulder to remind me that the painted lines are designed to indicate where the road is located, thereby redirecting us back to safety. I also tend to set the cruise control at a high speed and forget to turn it off in response to slowing (or stopping) traffic ahead. Again, my wife will place her hand on my shoulder, but this time with a noticeably firmer grip that sometimes draws blood and some choice words. To my surprise, and to Maria’s enjoyment, the new minivan relieved her of these duties.

On our trip north, I drifted too close to the shoulder, and before Maria could react, a series of sensors communicated to the operating system to adjust the steering wheel back to the centre of the lane. When my cruise speed threatened to slam me into a clearly braking vehicle in front of me, the minivan calmly decelerated exactly enough to maintain a safe distance before Maria could even open her mouth—or use her arm—in warning. Brilliant. At least, for the first hour. Soon, other assists came into play.

I stretched my arms to get blood flow back into my limbs only to be interrupted by a small chime coupled with a digital message across the display screen that read, “Please keep your hands on the wheel.” When I adjusted my seat because I had been sitting in one position too long, causing the car to briefly move back and forth, another small chime sounded alongside a digital image of a coffee cup with a message on the display screen that read, “Consider taking a break.” This particular safety assist made my family laugh because there is always a full cup of coffee next to me when I am driving across the country. “You already have a coffee, Dad! I guess you are just a bad driver!” my son chimed in from the Carnival’s peanut gallery.

The last straw came when I failed to use an indicator light to shift lanes, and a small green steering wheel icon lit up on my dash to indicate the engagement of Highway Driving Assist. This semi-autonomous system is designed to manage steering, acceleration, and braking (i.e., driving) on highways. While this did free me up to cruise “hands-free” at eighty-five miles per hour, it often did so after engaging with me in a small power struggle over the steering wheel. I either asserted my control over the minivan or, throwing my hands up (without any fear of going off the road, mind you), I allowed the minivan to assert its control over me. And so here I found myself “driving” and thinking about how much this experience had changed since I first got behind the wheel over two decades ago.

There is something quintessentially American about striking out on the open road. Perhaps this is because driving, as an expression of early adult independence, propels us toward the horizon at breakneck speed, uprooting us from the peoples and places of our past. Whatever the case, this sense of autonomy hinges on mastery in the art of driving, especially if you are learning how to operate a manual vehicle. To drive a stick shift requires the employment of your entire mind, body, and quite possibly your soul. The left foot presses down on the clutch while the right hand moves the shifter into gear. The left hand holds the wheel while the right foot delicately touches the accelerator as the left foot releases the clutch. Your nervous system must be regulated in order to convince your muscular systems to work in coordination with the senses of your eyes and ears. Initially, the mind focuses on one of these areas (clutch, gas, or steering wheel) at the expense of the others. It is not uncommon to release the clutch too rapidly as you stomp down on the gas pedal, sending the car into a lurch and then stalling out. When this occurs at a four-way stop, you convince yourself to try again even though your soul has left your body.

Gradually, your systems sync up and you relax into the dance of driving. You develop a “feel” for the vehicle by training yourself to trust your senses when you are behind the wheel. This involves easing off the clutch and accelerating steadily by hearing and feeling the engine hitting its maximum RPMs before engaging the next gear. Your mind inhabits a space that includes you and the vehicle as you make your way in the world fully conscious of the movements needed to manoeuvre safely. Learning to drive a manual vehicle is a highly complex and internalized affair, accomplished only through trial and error in the real world. The net result of this process of lurches and jolts, of accidents and errors, is the development of driver mastery. The machine is gradually placed under your control, and you are, literally and metaphorically, in the driver’s seat of your life.

The shift from manual to automatic transmissions altered our sensory relationship to driving. It was a subtle but significant change. Driving no longer required the full engagement of your limbs, or the attunement of your senses to the engine’s revolutions. Instead, this function was “automated,” leaving the driver with a more efficient experience, requiring less mental and physical effort. Flash-forward to our family’s road trip to Canada in the 2025 Kia Carnival, and most of the mastery of driving has been outsourced to a multitude of internal safety sensors “assisting” me across the country. The sum total of the assists—pushing, pulling, braking, accelerating—gave me the overwhelming sense that my vehicle was mastering me as much as I was mastering it. The constant monitoring of my progress and not-so-subtle nudges to conform to a particular style of driving that maximizes safety make me wonder if the van is working to exercise its autonomy over me. The tension between a driver’s autonomy and the increasingly automated car is palpable. But perhaps this tension is eased when we look at the safety statistics being logged with driverless cars. Perhaps there is good reason to give in to their attempts to control us.

The driverless car is the next phase in the future of driving, and, at least in Austin, Texas, that future is here. Although driverless cars are not available for consumers to purchase, they are available for personal transport thanks to Waymo, Tesla Robotaxi, and Avride (just three of a growing list of companies), who provide fleets of driverless cars throughout the Lone Star capital. Seeing a family seated in the back of a car pulling up beside me only to realize no one is in the driver’s seat still sends a jolt of panic up my spine. I imagine passengers in a horse and carriage being passed by a Ford Model T a century ago felt that same jolt.

Although there are some minor hiccups to work out when it comes to operating in severe weather or in digitally unmapped regions of the world, the safety provided by driverless cars is impressive. Since March 2026, Waymo vehicles have logged over 200 million miles (compared to humans’ 3.3 trillion miles per year), and to date there have been slightly over 1,400 crashes reported, 117 minor-to-moderate injuries, and 2 fatalities. Public health data indicate that many of the reported collisions occur because of human drivers rear-ending Waymo vehicles or backing into them. When we consider that over 36,000 individuals died in car fatalities last year in the United States (to say nothing of those injured), these early data sets look promising. Driverless vehicles may be ushering in a safer future for humans on the road.

Further, third-party public health agencies indicate that Waymo’s published safety numbers are all the more impressive since they are benchmarked not to the “impaired and inattentive driver,” who is responsible for over a third of the 36,000-plus fatalities, but rather to the “attentive and capable” driver. Since many fatalities on the road are tied to human behaviours such as drunk driving, fatigue, speeding, and distraction, the case for a world in which fully autonomous vehicles eclipse human-operated vehicles seems obvious. It may be inevitable.

And yet, when a Waymo passes me in Austin, with a mother and her children talking together in the back seat, I wonder if any of those children will ever feel the need or the desire to learn how to drive a car in their lifetime. Have we, to slightly misapply the words of T.S. Eliot in Choruses from “The Rock,” created a driving “system so perfect, that no one will need to be good” at it? Or want to be good at it? A growing number of teens refuse to acquire a driver’s permit. Data from the US Department of Transportation show that 50 percent of sixteen-year-olds in 1983 possessed a license compared to only 25 percent of sixteen-year-olds today. When applied to eighteen-year-olds, the drop is from 80 percent to 60 percent. If driving is an expression of our autonomy and a rite of passage into adulthood, this downward trend has critics wondering whether teens are just postponing adulthood or they no longer see driving as a key marker of entering into adulthood.

Although I am tempted to look at the downward trend of youth drivers through the lens of arrested development, conversations with my own middle-school students make me see a real evolution in their perception of driving. Recently, many of my seventh-grade students surprised me by relating that they do not want to get a license when they turn sixteen because it will be way easier and far safer to take a driverless car. Despite my attempts to convince them that mastering the art of driving is a liberating experience (one of many), they’ve already witnessed the reality that travelling by autonomous car is really no different from travelling by train or airplane. It is a passenger experience. Just as one does not pilot their own plane or conduct their own train, one does not need to drive their own car.

This discussion about driving occurred within the larger context of the Industrial Revolution. Consider the Luddites and their (in)famous response to new textile innovations of the early nineteenth century. Their smash-the-technology-that-is-taking-our-jobs approach is being echoed in the current reactions to AI in the early twenty-first century. The Luddites were much more than the anti-technology cranks we often reduce them to in our current debates. These were skilled artisans, masters of their crafts when mastery required countless hours as an apprentice, and then as a journeyman, to inherit the wisdom of preceding generations and to become expert in the tools of the trade.

In smashing power looms across the new industrial landscape of England, these protesters were not simply raging against the machines. They were resisting the dawning of an industrial world that degraded the humanity implicit in the mastery of a craft. As spinners and weavers realized the new machines could produce textiles at a pace to match global demand, the mastery of weaving textiles morphed into the monotonous work of keeping the machines humming day and night. The reality, I discuss with the students, is that the steam-powered looms, much like self-driving cars, were the inevitable future. The resistance movements today may take on a tone of “anti-tech” anger and fear, but they are a lament for the real loss—the further degradation of our humanity.

Despite all its apparent benefits, the self-driving car dehumanizes us in the same ways as the industrial looms. In the name of advancing our humanity—that is, making it more efficient —it also takes away the power and discernment and, dare I say it, craft of being human. So what might resistance in the age of Tesla Robotaxis look like? The other day, my neighbour’s son turned sixteen. My neighbour is from Mexico City, and although he is a decade older than I am, he shares similar concerns about the evolution of driving in a risk-free (or risk-limited) reality of autonomous cars. In response, he surprised his son by purchasing a car with a stick shift because, as he explained, being attentive to the act of driving means that his son will not have the time to be distracted by his phone or other things when he is behind the wheel. Further, when every new device promises to be safe, efficient, and easy, he wants his son to learn the skills of driving mastery, which can often be dangerous, inefficient, and quite difficult. In other words, he wants his son to develop aspects of being human in an age that promises so much by demanding so little of humans.

Perhaps driving a car will be no different from reading a book in a post-literate age, or attempting a small homestead for fresh vegetables and eggs even though Costco is down the street. But it is these deliberate acts of resistance to the systems that are nudging us toward a fully automated reality, one where we no longer believe we can trust our own senses because the digital sensors and artificial systems to which they respond are so advanced, that provide me with hope. We can still choose to be good at driving. We can choose to be good at reading and writing, at gardening and cooking, at weaving. Not perfect, but good. And perhaps, as Eliot continues in his poem, we will find “the man that is [good] will shadow / the man that pretends to be.”