"Not Responsible! Park and Lock It"

1981 Kessel, John [Joseph Vincent] (b. 1950). “Not Responsible! Park and Lock It.” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 61.3 (364) (September 1981): 59-78. Rpt. in his The Pure Product. Stories (New York: Tor, 1997), 303-328; and in his The Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel (Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2022), 11-33, with a note on the story on 563-565.

Dystopia in which all people live on a westbound highway with support services from, and it becomes clear, control by robots. Men are the drivers; women appear to be almost entirely in traditional roles. The story follows one boy from birth to getting his own car. Although the family has been travelling all the years in between, both events take place at the same mile marker. The Eastbound lanes appear to be a religious myth enforced by robots.