Google [GOOG] has been working on self driving cars for a number of years now. Over time the company has managed to fine tune the technology so that they are almost in a position to be used on the roads. In fact, one state has already approved them although the rule is that a driver needs to be behind the wheel to monitor things.
What we hear now is that the dozen or so cars that are always on the road have now managed to log an impressive 300,000 miles between them. At the moment they aren’t quite ready to ferry passengers around due to problems with interpreting temporary road-signs, driving on snow and other random things that happen on the road but as they log more miles and encounter more situations like this, Google is confident that in a few years time we will actually be driven around instead of drive around.
The benefits behind self driving cars include the ability to let the driver be productive doing something else instead of driving as well as letting drivers potentially sleep on journeys. Also, as the cars are computer controlled they don’t break the law and can also speak to each other which potentially means that if everyone had a self driving car then timing could be made where you simply don’t need to stop on your journey as timings over cross roads would have cars intersect between each other instead of stopping and waiting.
Who knows how long all this would take though? One other thing to point out is that while on automated driving the Google cars haven’t had a single incident although a car was in an incident but was under manual controls at the time.
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.