Your Car Has Two Steering Wheels

Your brand new cars is loaded to the gills with neat new tech. The dash is basically a giant tablet full of games and apps. It’s the hottest new tech product.

But it does have one strange quirk. While your last car had one steering wheel, which is largely considered the correct amount, this one has two.

To be more specific, you originally sought out to buy a vehicle with no steering wheel at all. After all, that is the ultimate killer app. You dreamt of speeding down the highway with a gin and tonic in your hand, letting the car safely navigate you to your next important business meeting. In your mind, you thought this product would be hermetically sealed and sterile, safer than any human driver and seamlessly autonomous.

That’s not really what happened though. There’s a tiny pod in the front of the car where a very small and highly intelligent primate lives. When they delivered the car they also built a little hut inside your garage where they would live. They’re sort of grumpy and crass; you try not to talk to them as much as you can.

And so, every time you get in the drivers' seat, the little person jumps into their tiny cockpit at the helm of your car. They’re a pretty good driver most of the time. In fact, you’ve gone a few stretches on the highway where they’ve taken the wheel for almost a full hour! In town or in the city is another story. While they have no problems speeding down the freeway, the busy intersections and unmarked lanes downtown throw them into a real loop. Nearly every time you’ve let them take over in the city they’ve almost gotten you killed. You still try, since maybe this time they’ve learned, but alas. Not very good.

It could be that since they’ve never lived in a city and truly experienced the nuance of social interactions, even the kind we make in vehicles, they have no real grounding in reality. They were trained on sanitary and orderly streets, far from the reality of where you live. You’re pretty sure they were born and raised in a lab somewhere, which could explain the lack of socialization. Either way, they lack a true understanding of the why part of reasoning, therefore missing the point of how and why people navigate their vehicles.

Still, you’re invested in this now. It has to work, or you’ll be the fool who spent six figures on a little monkey man driving your car.