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Long ago, science fiction author Douglas Adams captured humanity's need to get from point A to point B at faster and faster speeds.

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

— Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

All these years later, humanity still doesn't have an answer to that question. Nor about how to solve the traffic grid lock in cities across the world. What we do seem to have figured out though, is that humans do not want to drive from point A to point B anymore.

Over the last few years, several driverless vehicles have hit the market. There's obviously Google's long gestating project. Then there's Olli, a self-driving minibus. A self-driving passenger drone that could replace a taxi. Just a few days ago, students at the Indian Institute of Science unveiled the design for self-driving living rooms.

Now, the latest of these innovations can be seen in the video above, which is a report by CNN Money.

nuTonomy, a US-based startup is testing what it calls the first fleet of self-driving taxis in the world. Six such cars are being offered to customers in Singapore in a 6.5 kilometre region of Singapore known as One-North.

To be honest, the driverless bit is not yet in full flow. While the taxis do drive themselves, these first journeys have a driver to prevent anything untoward from happening. The startup beat Uber, who had announced on August 18 that they would launch a similar service by the end of the month.

Doug Park, the COO of the start-up, estimates that the number of cars on Singapore's roads can be brought down from 900,000 to 300,000 with self-driving taxis. "When you are able to take that many cars off the road, it creates a lot of possibilities. You can create smaller roads, you can create much smaller car parks," Park told Reuters. "I think it will change how people interact with the city going forward," he added.

Here's a company report-cum-advertisement of the user experience of the service.

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What would happen if a similar driverless service found its way to Indian shores?