Cologne, Germany - Ford is about to put a whole new spin on the concept of cruise control, with what it calls an 'intelligent speed limiter' - a system that reads speed-limit signs and automatically adjusts the maximum speed of the car so that you don't get flashed.
The idea, it says, is to prevent you from 'inadvertently' breaking the speed limit and picking up costly fines - or worse still, penalty points on your driving licence, as is common in Europe, and provided for in South Africa's Aarto legislation.
A number of current models offer the facility to set a 'governed' maximum speed beyond which the car will not accelerate unless you deliberately floor the accelerator - but now Ford has taken the 'nanny principle' a big step further; its all-new S-Max sports activity vehicle uses a windscreen-mounted camera and traffic-sign recognition software to monitor speed-limit signs and adjust the maximum permissible speed accordingly.
It can be over-ridden, apparently, by a firm prod on the loud pedal, - for safer overtaking - and it won't brake if the car moves into an area with a lower speed limit; it'll simply back off the throttle, all by itself, and let the car coast down to the new, lower speed.
And if you're going downhill and the car goes over the speed limit, it'll beep at you.
Then, when it recognises the sign for a higher speed limit, it will automatically adjust the 'governor' to allow the driver to accelerate up to the new speed limit - anywhere from 30-190km/h.
"Drivers are not always conscious of speeding and sometimes only become aware they were going too fast when they get pulled over by law enforcement or receive a fine in the mail," said Ford of Europe active safety supervisor Stefan Kappes.
"The intelligent speed limiter can remove one of the stresses of driving," he added, although I can't help feeling that in a South African context it would be more likely to add the stress of the average driver.
That said, the parents of most student drivers would probably welcome any system that would help to keep teenage motorists on the safer side of the law.
DRIVER AIDS - ASSISTANTS OR MASTERS?
Ford's new S-Max also has pre-collision assist with pedestrian recognition that can detect people walking in the road - or into it - and apply the brakes if the driver doesn't respond to warning signals, as well as park assist, to finesse ding-free parallel parking while you sit there with your hands folded, accelerating, braking and changing gear when you're told to.
It all comes down to the question, "How much of your authority behind the wheel are you willing to hand over to your car?"
And there's no cut-and-dried answer to that - not even for an individual driver. There are times when we all enjoy driving for its own sake - and you wouldn't be reading this page if that weren't true - and we enjoy every aspect of the interaction between car and driver.
But driving means just that: the driver decides when to hook the next gear, how hard to accelerate, when to brake, just when to turn in.
But, by the same token, there are long boring road trips and frustrating gridlock crawls when we would be only too glad too let the car get on with it while we ride the glass surfboard.
Would it work in South Africa? Sadly, I don't think so; South African roads are too badly maintained, too unevenly marked, and South African drivers too unpredictable, to entrust our lives to a machine.
It's all very well that your car knows the rules of the road and sticks to them - but what if the other driver doesn't? When Ford figures out a way for its cars to predict and avoid a minibus taxi running a red light in peak-hour traffic - or a truck overtaking another truck on the other side of that blind rise - then we'll talk again.