Tomorrow marks the beginning of my second year on AM. Time flies! It's been an interesting year, for many reasons, but a big perk of my job is being able to test new cars.

What I've found interesting is how advanced the modern car has become. I have to confess, a year ago I'd never driven anything with cruise control (my own car doesn't even have power steering) and now I've poked and played with all manner of in-car electronics the novelty still hasn't worn off.

Surprisingly though, it's taken until now for me to get to try out adaptive cruise control. But after spending a week, and more importantly 600 miles, with a new Ford Mondeo estate I'm actually impressed enough to enthuse about it on my blog.

To some extent it's a bit of a pointless luxury but it's incredibly useful when, like me, your average long haul journey involves lots of crammed motorways. Sick of having to turn cruise control on and off whenever someone cut me up, I was glad to pass the boring bit of the drive on to the car and just sit there steering.

I'm fairly convinced it's the future. Though I hope it doesn't do away with driving altogether. It does, at least, take the frustration out of crowded motorways. And that's a good thing in my book.