It is one of those coincidences of history that Henry Ford established the Ford Motor Company in the same year that the Wright brothers made their first flight. And now, 100 years later, these two technologies are becoming more closely intertwined than ever. In the next few years we will start to see cars adopting one of the key elements of aircraft design. They won't fly, but they will take the radical step of severing all mechanical connections between the driver and the car. No longer will drivers have their hands and feet on the car's real controls. Instead, any movement of the steering wheel or pressure on the pedals will be fed to a computer, which will be entrusted with the tasks of controlling the steering, acceleration and braking. Taking control away from the driver might seem unnecessary, even reckless. But it is old hat in the aviation industry, where "fly-by-wire" technology has been used successfully for 30 years. The automotive equivalent, drive-by-wire, is not quite ready for market, but all the major car makers are developing it and the first cars using elements of the technology are already on the road.
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