Driverless cars are coming. Like airbags and seatbelts, twenty years from now the idea of buying a car without some form of intelligence will seem ridiculous. But when cars are driving themselves, what does that mean for us?

Personally, I can’t wait. Not so much for computers driving us all around (although I’ll get to that), but for removing the control from human hands. Because there’s one truth, and that’s that we are terrible at driving. 180,000 were injured in road traffic accidents in 2013. And that’s just in the UK. We’re slow to react. We get tired or drunk or distracted.

Can any driver say, hand over heart, that they have never not looked at a junction or caught themselves drifting off after a long day? Because let’s not forget you’re driving a one tonne metal object at speed.

But back on track: when you ask people what they think about first with driverless cars, you get back the standard answer. “I just want to tell it where to take me and sit back.” But that’s not really what people do with their cars. You don’t drive to 18 Jameson Avenue or Peninsula Way. You pop to the supermarket, or pick up the kids from nursery.

Cars are not a destination, they’re a medium. You’re sitting in the office. A meeting is coming to an end. Your phone beeps, your car is ready outside because the traffic is bad and you’ve got to get to your next appointment on time. Contextual awareness lets the car become smarter than a box on four wheels. It can read your calendar, know your contacts and combine data from a thousand other sources to get you from A to B.

But why just you? It’s Saturday morning, you’re lying in bed and you hear the car roll off the drive. It’s okay. Your 11 old is off to football practice. You know the car will drop him off, come back in case your wife wants to go out and then return to the pitch to pick him back up. No more late night pick-ups after parties. No more calling for a lift when your bike gets another puncture 50 miles from home.

But why stop there? 80% of households have a car (20% have two cars). And yet those insurance-requiring, MOT-taxed vehicles sit idle on your drive or in a car park for most of their lives. You’re literally paying to store something for the privilege of driving in traffic everyday.

“Welcome to New Horizons Apartments. Here’s your door key and building car. Just use the app if you want to go anywhere.”

Now a building or a village, office or just a group of friends can buy a car and share it between themselves. Car sharing has been done before, but it’s difficult to get it to work at scale due to the nature of the surge in demand and migrating fleets. One day the concept of car ownership will be as alien as driving stick.

But until that day, I’m going to enjoy driving around.