It's fitting that the nation's first "mini-city" to test driverless cars is in Michigan, land of origin for the automobile. 

The University of Michigan's Mobility Transformation Center is in the process of building the 32-acre city on its north campus. It's called M City, and as a statement from the university says, it "will include a network of roads with up to five lanes, intersections, roundabouts, roadway markings, traffic signs and signals, sidewalks, bus facilities, benches, simulated buildings, streetlights, parked cars, pedestrians and obstacles like construction barriers."

Sounds like a real city. The point of it all, as the university makes very clear, is safety. Accidents being prevented because cars can talk to each other. Cars seeing pedestrains and reacting faster than a human brain. But it's also about easing congestion and efficiency, two things a connected computer could surely do better than someone tired after work and distracted by a commercial-free rock block.

Still, I can't muster in my imagination what the M City looks like. All I keep thinking about is Disneyland's Toon Town for some reason.

Seriously, though, for what it all means, I'll let the university take over:

"Connected" means that vehicles talk to each other and to elements of the infrastructure, according to a nationally defined standard of quality and reliability.

Connected vehicles anonymously and securely exchange data — including location, speed and direction — with other vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure via wireless communication devices. This data can warn individual drivers of traffic tie-ups or emerging dangerous situations, such as a car slipping on ice around an upcoming curve, or a car that may be likely to run a red light ahead.

"Automated" vehicles are equipped with new systems of situation awareness and control that increasingly replace elements of human response and behavior. Such vehicles respond automatically to traffic situations by activating certain driving functions, such as acceleration, braking or steering. The highest level of automation allows for cars to be driverless.

The convergence of connected and automated technologies accelerates the transformational power, reliability and deployment of a new system of mobility services for people and freight.

When implemented on a large scale, systems of connected and automated vehicles can dramatically improve safety, relieve traffic congestion, cut back on emissions, conserve energy and maximize transportation accessibility.

Driver, take me to the future. And step on it!