It's the morning of July 24, 2017, and I'm making an unpleasant commute that I've done many times before. Years ago, when I moved to Waterloo but kept my job in Toronto, I drove daily across that stretch of nasty, traffic-snarled highway known as the 401. The drive could take as little as 49 minutes; other days, I exited after three hours of stop-and-go traffic, not even halfway to the destination, a full day of pay lost because of a multi-car collision up ahead. Finding...