Automated Automobiles: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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This may be the norm in a story set in the future, but it's just as likely to be played for horror. Imagine yourself being trapped in an automated vehicle that [[AI Is a Crapshoot|is trying to kill you]], [[Everything Is Online|gets hacked by the bad guys]], or [[Failsafe Failure|just goes haywire]]. This fear will probably delay any attempts to implement it in [[Real Life]].
Not really [[Truth in Television]], but science is getting closer and
At the extreme end, this trope overlaps with [[Sentient Vehicle]].
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* Benny the Cab from ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]''. "No, ''I'll'' drive, ''I'm'' the cab!" {{spoiler|After being injured by some Dip, he/it ends up ''driving'' a car.}}
* The ''<s>[[In Name Only|Hardwired]]</s> [[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]'' movie has Spooner taking a snooze while his automated Audi drives itself. Later in the movie after he's involved in an accident {{spoiler|caused by a lorry load of robotic assassins}} he's chewed out for driving manually at high speed, implying it's unusual (as part of his technophobic ways) that he drives manually.
** He was also going in excess of 100
* The cars in ''[[Demolition Man]]'' have an auto-drive mode. It becomes a plot point when one of the cops is the only one that can drive a stick-shift (but not well), because she watches a lot of old movies.
* In ''[[The 6th Day]]'' Adam Gibson ([[Arnold Schwarzenegger]]) and his friend have a chat to each other while their car drives itself. The car then asks if he wants to switch to manual mode as they near the heliport where they work, which Arnie does.
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** ''Brothers in Arms'' and ''Cryoburn'' describe in passing the use of automated ground vehicles in London (Earth) and Northbridge (Kibou-Daini), respectively.
* The [[Eoin Colfer]] novel ''The Supernaturalist'' takes place in the [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|near future]] where almost all cars use plastic treads instead of tires and lock into grooves on the roads while driving, though not all roads have this track system and are used for drag racing.
* [[Robert Heinlein]] used the trope more than once. His Future History novel ''Methuselah's Children'' opens with a character settling back for a nap while her car drives her to her destination, before resuming manual control when she reaches the back roads. In his later novel ''Job: A Comedy of Justice'', his
* In [[Harry Harrison]]'s ''Homeworld'' (the first novel of the ''To the Stars'' trilogy), cars of the upper classes in most of the developed world can drive themselves provided they're on roads that have special wires under them. At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist is coming home from an inspection of a factory in another city. Upset, he gets drunk and then tries to drive. The car "smells" alcohol and refuses to allow him to drive manually until he's almost home. Later on, when he's trying to find out how the lower classes live in this [[1984]]-esque world, he has to leave his car a few blocks away from the end of the "wire" territory, so as not to arouse [[State Sec|Security]]'s suspicions.
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** The cars are indeed automated, they're just not ''autonomous''.
* In ''[[Transhuman Space]]'', everything with computing power (which is ''everything'') runs at the very least a non-sapient AI. Some supplements have suggested it might be illegal for a human to drive a car (especially an [[Flying Car|aircar]]), since they wouldn't have as much awareness as an AI treating the vehicle as a cybershell.
* In the ''Millennium City'' setting for [[Champions]], all cars within the city limits must have Vehicle Control Chips installed and functioning. The cars are driven by a central computer, rather than an onboard system. Presumably, the cars still have regular human controls as
** As the cars in Champions Online 1 ) have opaque windows, making it impossible to see if anyone is in them, and 2 ) Only exist as indestructible, moving scenery that occasionally bump (harmlessly) a PC or NPC, the point is actually rather moot.
* In the angels-vs-demons game ''[[In Nomine]]'', the angels called "kyriotates" specialize in possessing people and animals (benignly). Kyriotates in service to the Archangel of Lightning can also possess machines and have been known to possess cars, to drive their buddies, capture bad guys, and so on,
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* The animated ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' sketch ''Killer Cars'' was about this trope.
* The star of the short-lived 80's cartoon, ''[[Turbo Teen]]'' was a teenager who turned into one of these.
* The equally short-lived ''[[Pole Position (animation)|Pole Position]]'' cartoon of the mid-80s featured TWO of
* Happened at least twice in ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]''. Both times, Ecto-1 was possessed by a malevolent spirit and attacked the Ghostbusters. The first time it immediately transformed into a monstrous version of itself, but the transformation was much slower and subtler in the second instance; the car spent half the episode screwing with Winston's head before taking off on its own.
** Also happened a third time in ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'', but Ecto-1 wasn't alone in that instance.
* C.A.R. from ''[[The Replacements (animation)|The Replacements]]''.
* [[Stroker and Hoop]] had a sentient automated car named C.A.R.R. Although he wasn't always helpful considering his vengeful, paranoid, somewhat racist, and rather effeminate (although he denies it) personality.
* An episode of [[Danny Phantom]] had him and his friends attempts to find three [[Power Crystal
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* [[Life Imitates Art]] on this. [[wikipedia:Darpa grand challenge|Research and experiments have been going on]] for [[wikipedia:VaMP|quite some time.]]
* [http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/ This site] has a good rundown.
*
{{quote|IT'S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 miles away. You slide into your [[Cool Car|sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car]], press a [[Billions of Buttons|sequence of buttons]] and the national traffic computer [[Big Brother|notes your destination]], figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.<br />
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them [[Domed Hometown|covered by the new domes]] that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there's [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?|no need to worry]]. The [[Master Computer|traffic computer]], which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There [[Finagle's Law|hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated]]. }}
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