A dead man's condition and a licence for automated cars: a 2046 story

The Condition in the Trust (Hearth & Horizon): a 2026 bequest pays out on a driver's licence, and by 2046 the state sells one that never asks you to look.

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Hearth & Horizon has a new story in the twenty-years-ahead strand, The Condition in the Trust, about 2,700 words, text only for now. A retired driving instructor leaves his first grandchild $100,000 "on the day that grandchild holds a valid driver's licence". In November 2046 the trust is worth $219,112 (4 percent a year for twenty years: 1.04^20 is 2.19), she is sixteen, and nobody she knows drives.

The story's bet is that adoption, not capability, sets the pace. The AI in it is the kind we have now, a bit better each year and no faster, and the interesting 2046 is what is allowed: an invented licence class for automated cars only, bought in three weeks on a simulator, meets the words of the trust and betrays the man. The family's assistant lays out three roads (the ordinary licence, the automated-only one, or asking a court to modify the condition under Uniform Trust Code section 412), gives its own odds for the court, and declines to choose for a girl who is in the room.

What is real: section 412 and Ohio's adoption of the Code, and the long fall in the share of teenagers who hold licences. What is invented: the licence class, the insurance prices and the odds, which the story labels as a guess. It is fiction, not legal advice.

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