“Melody” creeps up on me silently, sidling up to the kerb with the insidious proposition that, after 50 years of driving, I should finally give up the nasty habit. Melody is a self-driving shuttle, one of four autonomous electric six-seaters (all with female monikers starting with an M), which recently began ferrying commuters, students, seniors and the homeless around the streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cars created the American cityscape, and driverless cars could have as big an impact on US cities as horseless carriages did 100 years ago. So small cities across the US are running mobility pilot programmes such as this to figure out how to build infrastructure for a world where cars talk to cars, buildings talk to buses and traffic lights talk to Melody.

Grand Rapids may seem an unlikely place to test a driverless future. Michigan, the home of Henry Ford, fancies itself “the state that put the world on wheels”. And no one loves driving like a Michigander: “This is Michigan — if you can own a car, you do own a car”, says Mike Morin of local innovation platform Seamless. He points out that many local employers pay for or subsidise parking, making it hard to resist driving to work.