Are computers going to take over our cars?

An article out today in Scientific American says that "Americans will soon be able to surf the internet, hold a video call and connect with friends on social media all via the dashboard of their car while sitting in the driver's seat. Further down the road, no one may need to be in the driver's seat at all."

Cars are now using a combination of Wi-Fi, GPS, cameras, radar and sensors (what is broadly called intelligent transportation systems, or ITS) to talk to each other, smartphones and intersections and to think for themselves. 

According to the article advances in in-vehicle technology could save lives or create a whole new set of distractions. 

Peter Sweatman, director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute said "It's happening faster than you think"  during an interview at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America's annual meeting and exposition last month in Nashville, Tenn.

Technologies that allow vehicles to park, operate in traffic and brake without any input from the driver have already been developed by car makers such as Volvo, Audi, Ford, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz.

Google's driver-less cars are already taking employees to work on California's highways and they are legal to operate in Nevada and Florida. Google reckons the cars could increase road safety and reduce wasted commuting time and energy and reduce the number of cars on the road by 90%. Production models of such cars could be on sale by as early as 2020 according to some estimates.

"When we see this convergence of connected and automated vehicles, it's going to be a revolution," Sweatman said. "We're going to be in a situation where we don't just get a small percentage improvement in things like safety, fuel efficiency, emissions, traffic flow and so on, we're going to see order of magnitude changes."

The Department of Transportation in America believes connected vehicles could greatly improve road safety.

"Having vehicles connected to each other and connected to the infrastructure, we believe, is going to make a dramatic improvement on safety," Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez said in an interview.