Forget the Vegas drive-thru wedding: Get hitched inside a driverless shuttle
Your wedding venue search is over. Who needs a wedding chapel when there's a perfectly functional driverless shuttle bus roaming the streets of Las Vegas?
That's the venue the American Automobile Association is offering a lucky couple looking to get hitched in Las Vegas. The regional office is holding an essay contest to find the perfect twosome to take part in the first wedding aboard a AAA autonomous vehicle. AAA has a self-driving shuttle pilot program that launched in Las Vegas at the end of last year. The all-electric, eight-seat Navya shuttles run on a .6-mile route through the city. In a few weeks, one of them will become a designated marriage mobile.
The hopeful couple needs to write their way — in 400 words or less — into a pre-planned, self-driving wedding. The writing prompt: "Tell us about a road trip you've shared as a couple and how an autonomous vehicle would have changed that experience."
The Las Vegas Review Journal says only Nevada residents can try for the June 30 wedding in front of Container Park, an outdoor shopping center built from shipping containers. Apparently the shuttle will be parked during the service, but afterword, it will take its passengers on a two-loop ride through the neighborhood.
Essays are due by June 20, and just 10 days later a couple will get hitched without having to stress about wedding planning details. Just show up at the pick-up location, ready to ride — autonomously. That stop at the drive-thru chapel won't be necessary.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
