Wider highway, better drivers - way to go!

Look Mom, no hands!

If these self-driving cars survive Los Angeles freeways, in the future, they should be just fine on our widened highway 1. 

San Mateo Times/Associated Press/Justin Prichard, 9/16/14.  "California licenses handful of self-driving cars, most from Google."

"LOS ANGELES -- Computer-driven cars have been testing their skills on California roads for more than four years -- but until now, the Department of Motor Vehicles wasn't sure just how many were rolling around.  That changed Tuesday, when the agency issued testing permits that allowed three companies to dispatch 29 vehicles onto freeways and into neighborhoods -- with a human behind the wheel in case the onboard computers make a bad decision. These may be the cars of the future, but for now they represent a tiny fraction of California's approximately 32 million registered vehicles. 

With California's testing rules in effect, the DMV is drafting regulations that will govern self-driving cars once they are ready for the general public. Those rules, which the DMV must finish by year's end, will untie knotty issues such as whether a person needs to be in the vehicle at all."   Read article.

And your car went to work
without you again...

Related articles:  Regulations -  ABC News/Associated Press/Justin Pritchard, Los Angeles, 9/16/14. "Self-driving cars now need a permit in California."  "... Google alone is closing in on 1 million miles. The technology giant has bet heavily on the vehicles, which navigate using sophisticated sensors and detailed maps. Finally, government rules are catching up.  In 2012, the California Legislature directed the DMV to regulate the emerging technology. Rules that the agency first proposed in January went into effect Tuesday."  

Engineer's view - TED, 2011, video 4: 14 minutes. "Sebastian Thrun helped build Googles' amazing driverless car, powered by a very personal quest to save lives and reduce traffic accidents. Jawdropping video shows the DARPA Challenge-winning car motoring through busy city traffic with no one behind the wheel, and dramatic test drive footage from TED2011 demonstrates how fast the thing can really go. .... Sebastian Thrun, Engineer is the director of the Stanford Artifical Intelligence Lab and is working, through robotics, to change the way we understand the world."  

 Current state of the technology.  San Jose Mercury News/Gary Richards, 5/13/14, includes video,"Test-driving Googles's driverless car: Look, Mom, no hands." "Google's robotic cars start as standard vehicles but each packs about $150,000 in equipment, including a $70,000 radarlike Lidar system, with a laser on the roof and enough cameras and high-tech gizmos inside to make any Silicon Valley techie envious. ...The car made a few abrupt moves into left-turn lanes. And once it shuddered at another turn when a nearby bus seemed to confuse the onboard computers. "It's not perfection yet," said Google's Nick Munley, but he said it's safer than a car with a driver at the wheel."

Note photographs:  Look Mom no hands! from Automotive.com.  No driver by John Green/Bay Area News Group, from the related San Jose Mercury News article, 5/13/14, includes video.

Posted by Kathy Meeh