Back in 2016 I bought a new car, and one afternoon on the motorway it did something that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I was driving home, traffic was light, and I clicked the thing on. And the car just… drove. It held the lane on its own. Gentle little corrections, left, right, following the curve of the road like it had done it a thousand times. My hands were still on the wheel — the car insisted on that, it would beep at me and sulk if I let go for too long — but they weren’t doing anything. They were just resting there. Almost useless.

I had been driving for twenty years at that point. Two decades of the thing being mine to do — the steering, the watching, the tiny constant negotiation between me and the road. And here was a machine, in my own car, doing it while I sat there like a passenger in my own life. It was wonderful. It was also a little bit terrifying, in the way that wonderful new things often are. I remember thinking: this is it, the floor shifted under me, and it didn’t even make a sound.

I didn’t know it back then, but I had just met Level 2.