You drink your morning coffee and read the Times News as you turn into a parking space at your place of work. You exit the vehicle from the back seat.

A prerecorded voice from inside the car says, “Have a nice day.” You almost say thank you, but you hold back and just laugh out loud.

Who’s driving your car?

Nobody.

What was once nothing more than a cartoonist’s imaginary scene in a TV program called “The Jetsons” is very soon to become a reality on roadways across America. Tesla is building driverless cars as I write this column. According to The Telegraph website, “Machines are better at following rules of the road than humans.”

So how does a car drive safely without a driver? Radar sensors monitor the positions of vehicles nearby. Video cameras detect traffic lights, read road signs, and look out for pedestrians and other obstacles. Sensors help detect the edges of roads and identify line markings by bouncing pulses of light off the car’s surroundings. Other sensors in the wheels detect positions of curbs and other vehicles while parking.

A central computer analyzes data from all the sensors to manipulate steering, acceleration and braking.

To be honest, I don’t love to drive like some of my friends do. Driving three hours down the turnpike or the stop and go in city traffic is not what I would call fun. Unlike some others, I don’t mind sitting in the passenger’s seat when someone else is driving.

Let me repeat, “When someone else is driving.” You will never get me in any vehicle doing 70 mph on Route 80 with NO ONE behind the steering wheel. Several reasons make me think this way.

Let’s start with Joshua Brown. He sat in his driverless car, ignoring multiple warnings to have his hands on the wheel as the car approached an intersection in Florida. The sensor in his vehicle that was supposed to “see” the red light was incapacitated by the bright sunlight. As the car entered the intersection, a 16-wheel truck and trailer was entering at the same time. Brown was killed instantly.

Let me go to my point number two. Who reading this column today has never had a technology malfunction with a cellphone or a laptop computer? Exactly. You can trust your life with a maze of circuitry wires and sensors. I’d rather walk to California than put myself in jeopardy to get T-boned by a truck because it was a nice sunny day.

Here’s another frightening issue that might happen. I’m driving my 2011 GMC and I look into the window of the car next to me at a red light. I see no one behind the wheel and two small kids napping with their father in the back seat. So if or when the sensors fail, causing a fatal accident, would you blame the father or sue the car company? There will be many police reports that cite the cause of driverless car accidents as “computer glitches.”

The cost for these vehicles is estimated to be between $75,000 to $100,000 with brand names like Mercedes-Benz, Acura and BMW. That mercifully excludes me from the list of potential buyers. I wonder what the repair bill would be if the system’s computer fails and you’re lucky enough to be alive to pay it.

Should I not mention that a driverless car is one more reason to remove personal responsibility from the human race? Imagine a sensor malfunctions and an accident occurs. A passenger from each car jumps out.

“Your stupid car just put a big dent in my door!”

“Don’t yell at me. Go yell at the car.”

“The stupid car doesn’t care!”

“Neither do I because it’s not my fault.”

It’s not my fault! Let’s add driverless car accidents to the list of excuses for not taking the blame for something we do wrong. It’s not my fault I failed the class. It’s not my fault I struck out in the game. It’s not my fault I got fired from my job.

Let me get ridiculous for a moment. Who knows what future tech and computers will bring us next? Teacherless schools, parentless child raising, You won’t need your eyes to see a TV because you’ll have a chip inserted in your head so your mind “watches” the movie. You won’t need your ears during conversation because tech-driven mental telepathy will exchange thoughts from the brains. You won’t need your arms or legs. Robots will get what you want and bring it to you. What it comes down to is this.

You won’t need you.

Anybody interested in flying to France for a vacation on a pilotless airplane? Not me. I think I’ll take a boat. Wait! No one is there to steer the ship?

Never mind. I’ll just stay home and go for a bike ride as long as I know it’s my behind on the seat and my feet on the pedals.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.