Google driverless car - Topic - YouTube
Just before Christmas, Google announced the “first real build” of their self-driving vehicle, a button-nosed smart car that looks like it could’ve been a friendly police officer in Disney’s Cars’ movies. Driverless cars could save thousands of lives a year in the U.S. alone and also provide significant economic and environmental advantages. But the road to these benefits is full of technological and regulatory curves.
In announcing the update, Google said the vehicle it previously revealed in May was an “early mockup.” This version brings together all the elements of the car in what is the first fully functional form of the vehicle. While Google hopes to have the new cars on the streets of California next year, the California DMV recently acknowledged it will miss a year-end deadline to adopt rules for this new form of transportation due to safety concerns
Self-Driving Car Test: Steve Mahan - Google Careers
The One Mistake Google Keeps Making
The mistake is the same as with Glass: it’s a product without customers. It’s Google assuming that someday someone will actually buy a driverless car. Not a hobbyist or an eccentric millionaire. But a customer who actually needs or desires a driverless car. Someone who, given the choice of spending $30K on a car that they fully control and can go anywhere they want at any speed they want – or another, likely more expensive buggy that will only travel on certain routes at slower speeds and with less options. Hmm, which car would you buy?
For driverless cars to work, to decrease congestion, increase safety, reduce lawsuits and lower our insurance premiums everyone would have to be driving one. Every road and car in the country would have to accommodate some sort of technology or sensor. The only way this would happen is if the government mandates the technology (similar to the government mandating rear view video cameras
in cars starting in 2018). And for the driverless car system to truly work as desired, there would need to be more centralized control over our entire transportation system, from the roads and highways to the cars we’re allowed to use, the speed we’re allowed to travel and the places we’re allowed to go. This, in the very country where the majority of the population fights against government regulations, red tape and bureaucracy. Where people line up at movie theatres to see a two-star comedy about the hypothetical killing of a foreign leader just because it’s an exercise of their free speech. Where people complain about their high taxes and launch national movements against government controlled healthcare and are terrified at their continued loss privacy.
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