Yeah but this sort of thing isn't easily adopted in the U.S.A. For some reason, our gov't thinks its okay for humans to kill humans, but if a machine was ever responsible killing humans, God forbid!
America was founded based on freedom. Americans want the freedom to be able to control their own car without some Orwellian computer telling them what to do. This might work well in China, but I sure as heck hope it never makes it to the United States! When I used to visit my grandparents, we would drive on dirt roads to get to their house. Aside from the city people that have never seen a farm field, most of the United States is covered by open terrain. People drive on dirt roads and across their property and fields where improvised dirt roads aren't on Google maps. A Prius does just find on a dirt road, as does a Leaf or Volt. Oh, lane assist is great, you say? Why did the BP oil rig sink? Because execs relied on the safety systems which instilled in them the confidence to take bigger risks. Throughout society, people take bigger and bigger risks because they think safely systems are going to back them up. Air bags don't save you at 100mph. Back to LANE ASSIST ... now people will think they can talk on cell phones, eat, and perhaps even DUI because, of course, the lane assist will save their life. (extreme sarcasm)
I'm not surprised Goofle has been up to stuff like this. Why? Eric Schmidt Quotes: The Hall of Fame! | SEO Book.com
Calm down. Of course there would be an override, with the option to drive yourself. Thank God you don't work at Google. LOL.
Thanks! My dad forwarded me a version of this article w/no pictures nor video. Heh, I guess we've got the beginning of Skynet. We've already got autonomous flying drones and now we've got this... Side notes: There was an excellent documentary on the DARPA Grand Challenge (2005) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that Stanford won at NOVA | The Great Robot Race | PBS. It's great watching for anyone who's into robotics or vision in computers. I watched thanks to TiVo and not online. For those who like sitting in front of their computer to watch a long show, it looks like it's still up at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/program.html. At CES in January 08, I got to ride in CES Notebook: A Victory Lap in an Autonomous Car: Scientific American (winner of CMU wins $2 million in urban robot race | News Blog - CNET News [2007 DARPA Urban Challenge]) with the computer doing the driving. They had a mock course set up and another human driven car to act as traffic. The driving was very jerky but it was amazing to see the potential and to witness the car driving itself w/a laptop showing a map of what it thought was around the car. Too bad I didn't take a video of it. All I have is some pics of the inside and back of the Tahoe.
The important questions are whether they can properly simulate road rage, aggressive driving, and texting? Tom
A robot driver converts part of life spent commuting or running errands into something enjoyable . . . designing better robot drivers. Bob Wilson
Didn't Volvo recently announce this as a direction that would take years to achieve? Looks like the future of computerized cars lies with tech companies with huge IT resources.
Google Car: It Drives Itself - ABC News has brief video of this. Becky Worley is sometimes a guest on the TWiT podcast.
Another accident involving Google self-driving car, and Google employees sustained some neck pain. The Google car was stopped at an intersection, facing green light but with the next block full. Google's Lexus self-driving SUV involved in a minor accident with injury
i have been nervous, in that position, watching my rearview for the person behind me not slowing down. however, if you've already got a car behind you, it's hard to be prepared for the double whammy.
