Cars - Do you drive a manual or automatic?

[robvalue]

I've always driven manual. When we got our most recent car I test drove a couple of automatics, and I liked them. Getting used to not having to put my foot on the clutch as I slowed to a halt was weird. There is no clutch! So my foot was freewheeling in mid air. Haha! Even though I'd driven nothing but manual for 20 years, I picked up automatic almost right away. I imagine going the other way would be much more difficult.

This guy was telling me about a new type of car which drives itself, you just enter the postcode, and it then takes you there. Unless he was totally having me on, he reckoned such cars aren't far away from being available and are already in the testing stage. My immediate reaction was, "They'll be unsafe!". But then I quickly realized that even the safest human drivers regularly make mistakes, which computer ones never would. They'd be calculating stopping distances all the time, they would notice everything more consistently and drive at safer speeds. I think the roads will be much safer once this is the norm.

It better be real. If it wasn't, he pulled one hell of a practical joke on me. I should really go look it up.