In the not-so-distant future, instead of logging on to your favorite, uh, video-based website, all you might need to do to play voyeur is hop in your car and hit the highway for a quick road trip.
That’s because, according to scientists who study this sort of thing, people will be having a bunch of sex in self-driving cars as the vehicles become more and more common.
The study, published in the Annals of Tourism Research, says the more time we spend in self-driving autonomous vehicles (AVs), and no longer being responsible for navigation, the more people will decide to just start knocking boots to kill some time on our travels.
“One of the starting points was that AVs will provide new forms of competition for hotels and restaurants. People will be sleeping in their vehicles, which has implications for roadside hotels. And people may be eating in vehicles that function as restaurant pods,” Scott Cohen, who led the study, explained to Fast Company. “That led us to think, besides sleeping, what other things will people do in cars when free from the task of driving? And you can see that in the long association of automobiles and sex that’s represented in just about every coming-of-age movie. It’s not a big leap.”
It’s not even a small hop.
And don’t even get us started on how self-driving cars will be used in areas where prostitution is legal. Okay, fine, let’s talk about that too.
“Particularly in cities where the governance is in place, where prostitution is legal, and regulations allow AVs to develop fast and be on roads quickly, we could see this come together rapidly,” Cohen pointed out. “Europe is one of those places. It’s not impossible or that far-fetched to imagine the red light district on the move. Prostitution doesn’t need to be legal for this to happen. Plenty of illegal activities happen in cars.”
Soooo… there’s no way that the manufacturers of these automonous vehicles will start designing the interiors of their cars with people having sex in it in mind, right? Ha! Good one.
While at least one industry group has pointed out that AVs will be used for sex, since the new study published, Cohen has been fielding questions about the idea. Carmakers themselves may even begin to rethink their cabin design based on demand. “Of course sex sells,” he says, “and there’s likely to be a capitalization on this in terms of commercial interest.”
Just don’t forget to buckle up out there when this all starts going down.
[The Daily Dot]
