Self-driving cars. An almost childish vision of the future, right up there with medicines that can cure anything, levitating cities and the human race colonizing the vast reaches of space and time. Science fiction on steroids, applied to an integral part of real life. Except, in just a few short years, they may very well be a reality. All you have to do to avail of this technology is hand in your keys and driving license. This is the image that springs to mind, whenever the self-driving car topic is brought up, definitely a hot button issue in this day and age.

Funnily enough, car driving - both the car itself and who's behind the wheel - ties a lot into the worlds of entertainment and pop culture, despite it being such a mundane and necessary part of life for everyone. Like having a coffee or brushing teeth, it's just one of those things. And if car driving indeed does become automatic, a whole host of things will be changed forever, not least of which will be motorist laws, ticketing regulations and insurance brackets, but entertainment as well. And as we leave behind the human element behind getting from point A to point B, we may also be, quite possibly, leave behind the crazy car rampage fantasies that Hollywood seems to be mass producing for the celluloid, ever since the early 1970s and well into the present age of movie-making, that began with chronicling the finest of American muscle cars to begin with, and moving up to the Italian supercars of today like Lamborghini, Pagani, Ferrari, and Maserati. Why they all end with the letter I — that's a mystery that's best left unsolved. For now, anyway. The movies that feature cars in them are great movies in of themselves, but the cars the actor drives are as much a character and a plot device as anything else.

Take, for one glorious example, Barry Newman in the white Dodge Challenger in Vanishing Point:

And, for glorious example number two, we have Steve McQueen in his green Ford Mustang in Bullitt :