Teacher Bai, who was driving, buckled his seat belt, raised his hand, and set the destination on the screen: the main gate of Frontier Technology University.
He tapped "Start Driving," and the vehicle began moving automatically. Teacher Bai sat there as if lost in thought, completely motionless.
The urban roads of Yemo City had achieved fully automated driving. All vehicles were connected to the network, and supercomputers on every road section planned routes and adjusted every vehicle on the streets in real time.
Under normal circumstances, the vehicles on the roads were arranged with extreme precision. The distances between them front, back, left, and right were identical, and their speeds were identical as well. They moved forward smoothly and quickly in unison, without all the back-and-forth lane changes, overtaking, and cutting in. Only when a vehicle occasionally malfunctioned and went out of control, or an ambulance or fire engine needed to pass urgently, would all the vehicles on the road rapidly adjust to clear an empty lane. Moments later, everything would return to normal.
Thanks to the unified coordination of the supercomputers, Yemo City's traffic accidents had fallen from 410 per month to 6, while traffic deaths had dropped from 14 per month to fewer than 1. Of the few minor accidents that remained, half were caused by excessively old vehicles suddenly malfunctioning and going out of control, while the other half involved pedestrians riding electric scooters or walking recklessly into traffic. They were almost impossible to avoid through technology alone.
Teacher Bai's main task was simply to tap the screen and set a destination. Situations requiring manual control were almost never encountered. Statistically speaking, one would have to ride in a car continuously around Yemo City for at least fifty years before manual intervention was needed once.
After leaving