Autonomous cars, also called self-driving cars are back in the news sounding and looking more likely than ever.

If you decided to celebrate this Festive Season by staying home, news reports of record levels of disruption on the roads may suggest you made a wise decision.

In early November, the Amsterdam-based GPS producer TomTom released its 2013 ‘Travel Index’ ranking Vancouver as the most congested city in North America—more congested than Los Angeles, Toronto, and New York, ranked respectively at 2nd, 7th and 9th on TomTom’s ‘top ten’ list.

If you may be watching more television than usual over the next week or two, you may want to consider the two-season Canadian series Don’t Drive Here.  It’s a documentary on the Discovery Channel that is part travelogue and part ‘how to’ drive weird and often not so wonderful two-, three-, four- and more-wheeled vehicles in some of the most traffic congested, road-rules-free cities around the world.