I recently drove a BMW that could read. Not books - not yet. But every time we passed a speed limit sign, the BMW took note, using a scanner. And then it beamed the speed restriction on to the windscreen in front of me, where there could be very little excuse for not seeing it.

Obeying that limit was something the BMW graciously left up to me. It didn't intervene at any point, or offer to lend a steadying hand - or rather foot. But give it time. When cars start to read road signs, they can't be far from acting on them.

By comparison, the system that the Department for Transport has been trialling sounds a touch clunky - an automatic speed-limiter, drawing information from satellite navigation maps and mechanically forcing the car to keep to the rules. The thinking is that speed-limiters like this would handily counter the tendency of so many of us to assume that the speed limit is a kind of ball park figure or, like the pictures on the fronts of cereal packets, a “serving suggestion”.

The Commission for Integrated Transport reckons speed-limiters could reduce accidents involving injury by up to 29 per cent. “No, they won't,” says Safe Speed. When you take responsibility from the driver, the road safety campaign group argues, you weaken his engagement with the task at hand and cause him to enter “zombie mode”.

But isn't that the way driving is going? Many modern cars now come with “zombie mode” as standard. They are loaded to the roof-rails with electronic nannying devices - features designed to remove from the driver the onerous responsibility of controlling the car and to hand it to someone more capable, better focused and less likely to mess up, namely the car itself.

Models from Volvo and Toyota, among others, will spot solid, unmoving objects up ahead, calculate the chances of you hitting those objects if you don't slow down soon enough, and begin to apply the brakes on your behalf. When the Citroën C4 Picasso notices you drifting across lane markings without your indicator on, it takes the view that you have probably nodded off and sends a wake-up call in the form of a vibrator inside your seat cushion. (Not as much fun as it sounds.)

The same car will measure the space between two stationary cars and let you know whether you should try parking in it. The Skoda Superb goes even farther and will reverse into the gap while you sit there sheepishly with your hands in your lap, trying to look like you could do it perfectly well yourself, really, but just thought that you would let the car have a go.

All in all, it's hard not to feel that today's cars are increasingly sending drivers a message. And the message is: “You're hopeless. You fall asleep, your lane discipline is atrocious, you can't park, you hunt for leftover Jelly Beans in the coin tray when you're meant to be concentrating on the road ahead and you've forgotten entire chapters of the Highway Code, assuming you ever really knew them. From now on, I'm driving.”

Yet is it really better to give a driver less to think about, in which case you risk him drifting dreamily into the nearest tree? Or should the driver be piled as high as possible with responsibility, thus forcing him to remain sociably alert, but, at the same time, potentially inducing the kind of synaptic meltdown that ends in people backing in puzzlement on to roundabouts, with their windscreen wipers on?

Those in favour of responsibility cite the system adopted in some Dutch towns, wherein the roads are cleared of all markings, only to unleash, not (as one might imagine) chaos and an unending chain of litigation, but rather a stunningly self-regulating ballet of automotive courtesy, in which gentle motorists come and go, pausing only to blow kisses and plait each other's hair.

My own local council frequently runs a pilot scheme along these lines. We call it “traffic light failure”. And very successful it is, too, in introducing new levels of caution and politeness across a four-way intersection, although I have never heard anyone complain when the lights are eventually restored. But that's because it's Britain, presumably.

Nevertheless, logic does seem to favour putting responsibility in the driver's own hands. If, for example, drivers were strapped to their bonnets, in such a way that the most forward points of their cars became their heads, we would almost certainly see a marked shift towards greater care and attention by road users. But we would end up sacrificing much of the comfort and dignity that we cherish in our everyday motoring. And it would be dangerous.

Clearly it's the compromise, or “semi-zombie”, position that is a problem. Best, perhaps, to cling on gamely and wait for the time, not long off, when technology entirely removes the burden of driving and cars become completely auto-piloting.

We'll miss the feelings of liberation and the self-determinism that were the car's great gifts to man. But we'll enjoy sitting in the back, I suppose, reading the paper. Or, probably, having it read to us by the car.

Giles Smith writes the motoring column in times2

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