Bubba Jim meets the future at a Morganton stoplight

In his jacked-up GMC Sierra 3500HD, Bubba Jim pulls up at a stoplight in downtown Morganton, 400 horses punishing every noise ordinance in the book.

Bubba has his arm crooked out the window like it’s welded to the humongous side mirror. Charlie Daniels is so loud the Devil’s fiddle can be heard in Drexel.

Quite the road boss, that Bubba. Just above the cannonball-sized trailer hitch in the back is a pair of swinging, chrome-plated Bullnads. Tactful.

The bumper sticker reads: “God Bless the Military. Especially the Snipers.” Geez Louise.

He’s feeling good. Commander-in-Chief. Gettin’ ‘er done.

A slick, polished luxurious white car pulls up beside Bubba. It has a weird round gizmo on top.

Bubba looks down about five feet onto the machine. It clearly never towed a bass boat, that’s for damn sure. It’s as quiet as a tomb.

“An electric vehicle?” Bubba thinks with disgust. “Oughta be outlawed. One of those damn Jimmy Carter no-carbon excuses for a car.”

He feels the need to shoot the driver a high-voltage Hairy Eyeball and convey his disgust.

Bubba Jim leans out of his window and feels the comforting rumble of his horses through the door frame. He peers deep into the polished white car.

Bubba expects to see behind the wheel some dweebed-up English-professor Clean Air freak.

Instead, he sees …

… NOBODY!

There’s nobody in the car! The light turns green and damn if the driverless white car with the gizmo on top doesn’t just glide away, right on cue, smooth as silk. It floats down the road and takes a turn like it was tethered to the pavement.

Bubba Jim is speechless, jaw agape, like he just had a close encounter with a UFO.

He engages the horses and heads off to share his ‘the-hell-was-that’ story with the boys while tossing back some cold ones along the banks of the Catawba. Maybe shoot some beer cans with the 12-gauge, too.

Had this actually happened, Bubba would have just witnessed his first Waymo driverless car. But Wayno’s not here.... yet.

Technology is taking over all things automobile. In Morganton, we have laser-beam GPS parking enforcement now, after all.

Here’s how Waymo works:

Say you need a ride somewhere. You open the Waymo app on your smartphone and punch in the particulars. The Waymo app replies, “Be there in 10” and brings up a map with real-time info.

Right on the button, as per the app, a sleek, white, all-electric driverless Jaguar I-PACE SUV expertly pulls up. Mario Andretti couldn’t park it better.

The Waymo looks like a perfectly normal white Jaguar SUV that accidentally wandered into a robotics convention and came back wearing gadgets. There is a sensor dome perched on the roof like a high-tech hat. The air crackles around it. Camera pods are tucked into the body, radars hidden in the bumpers, and there’s enough scan power to map every crack in the pavement

With your Waymo app, you unlock the passenger door and get in the backseat. You’re the only human inside.

It is calm, quiet, and minimal, leather seats, uncluttered dash, no pine-tree air freshener swinging from the mirror to hide the smell of weed.

The Jaguar I-PACE SUV carries 29 cameras and a full 360-degree perception system. It maneuvers around traffic, obeys all laws, avoids possums but (per user preference) flattens snakes to smithereens.

The steering wheel turns itself. The vehicle glides without engine rumble. It does not get tired, distracted, or yell at traffic.

There’s no small talk about the weather.

It just scans and calculates a gazillion times a second, and moves with eerie confidence, possessed by a polite supercomputer.

After a few minutes the novelty fades. You find yourself checking email, casually trusting a rolling supercomputer to handle traffic, pedestrians, and the occasional Burke County improvisation.

Recently The Beloved was in Los Angeles visiting her sister. Her sister summoned Waymo’s Jaguar to her house. My phone blew up with The Beloved’s eventual photos and text messages and calls about the experience.

“It, it, I, … there’s no driver,” she said. “It, it, it’s VERY, ah, I, it … Check back. Make sure we weren’t in a wreck.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “You’ve been telling me for years I drive like a blind crazy person. And except for that wreck near the coast where I T-boned the guy, you’re fine.”

Waymo’s fully driverless robotaxi service operates in about 10 U.S. cities in Alabama, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California.

Add Charlotte to the list. Waymo recently confirmed plans to bring its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to Queen City streets.

“We are eager to see how Waymo’s expansion into Charlotte can increase accessibility, modernize transportation, and create safer roads,” Gov. Josh Stein said.

North Carolina passed a law in 2017 (House Bill 469) that created a framework for “fully autonomous vehicles.”

And this is the important punchline for anyone who enjoys city council meetings. The Bill also included a preemption clause that keeps local governments from making their own AV-specific ordinances.

In other words, if Morganton wanted to pass a driverless car ordinance, the state has already said, “Bless your heart, no.”

Local governments cannot regulate autonomous vehicles separately. Any rules must come from the state, not city hall.

So disappointing. We love a good ordinance in Morganton.

Naturally, we are emotionally prepared for a driverless car ordinance.

But the state says no. It is a Waymo.

One day soon, Bubba Jim will rumble up to that same light, confident as ever, and beside him will glide that silent white Waymo with its spinning space hat. No driver. No exhaust. No ordinance to tame it.

The light will turn green. The robot will go. And for the first time in downtown Morganton history, the quietest thing at the intersection will be the one in control.