Nevada Allows Google's Self-Driving Car: Super or Scary?
SodaHead News
2012/05/10 13:00:00
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Google's been working on patenting a self-driving car for a while, and now it's fully licensed to drive. In Nevada, at least. According the The Associate Press, the car received a license to drive after demonstrating its safe driving on the Las Vegas Strip. For whatever reason, the license requires that two passengers be in the car while it's on auto-pilot, doubling the risk. On the other hand, it's the perfect solution for those worried about Google's Glass project.
DMV director Bruce Breslow explained, "They're designed to avoid distracted driving. When you're on the Strip and there's a huge truck with three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box." Any drawbacks? He adds, "It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe." It sounds like an amazing invention, and so far it hasn't gotten into any accidents, but does a self-driving car sound a little scary to you?
DMV director Bruce Breslow explained, "They're designed to avoid distracted driving. When you're on the Strip and there's a huge truck with three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box." Any drawbacks? He adds, "It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe." It sounds like an amazing invention, and so far it hasn't gotten into any accidents, but does a self-driving car sound a little scary to you?
Top Opinion
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Scary
+8Kinda scary, actually. I love technology, but as anyone who deals with emerging techologies on a daily basis can tell you (and I do), there are always glitches and unforseen problems and scenarios. Always. For something like navigating a high speed vehicle down a road with changing traffic, weather, and road conditions, I'm not comfortable handing the wheel over to a computer yet. Anyone who has experience with GPS navigators knows that they are frequently wrong about routes and other trip data.
What's more, even good drivers sometimes cause accidents. They get tired, distracted & simply can't be looking at multiple places at once. Those factors are eliminated with automated driving.
These are going to save a lot of lives.
I don't expect that these systems will ever become perfect. But, I expect that they'll eventually become much better than average.
Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. I like to be in command. I like to be the "skipper" of my "vessel." I don't yield that command to any machine. I'm less than comfortable being a passenger of a *human* driver, of anything smaller than a big bus, or a train, or a tram.
But, stop and think about this. You're going to get old someday. At least I hope so. The day may come when you are no longer capable of driving. Wouldn't this be better than losing your independence, when the time comes?
If the world is even around by the time you describe, I'll have to apply to some kind of "paratransit service."
Anything mechanical or computer related is going to have it's glitches. But, as I was pointing out to someone else, I think we can get to the point where these cars perform better than most humans.
I'm basing that on my estimate that a sizable minority of drivers absolutely suck and should really have their keys taken away. And, of course, even good drivers have their bad moments.
I won't say that we're ever going to reach 0 fatalities on the road. But, I think we can eventually reduce them significantly.
And I might want to drive to a place that the server doesn't know about. Ever think of that?
I think you have to agree that this system is a lot more complex than an aircraft auto-pilot, with glitch-prone-ness to match.
Hopefully, that will always be an option. Like you, I sometimes like to get out in the open and just enjoy driving my car.
I'm very pro-freedom, so I'll never tell anyone that they MUST use one of these cars & use the auto-nav at all times. At least not until the DMV says that they're incompetent and must turn in their license.
As for glitches, of course they're going to happen. This system will NEVER be perfect. But, my guess is that it's eventually going to be better than a lot of the drivers I see on the road.
At any rate, we do need to proceed with caution. We can't release these things to the public before they're at least at good as the average driver & we need to be careful about how many are put on the road to avoid overloading the GPS systems.
Dumb idea.
Make no mistake. It's not going to make things perfect. There will still be things that happen too quickly for it to respond. There will still be situations in which there are no good options. It'll still slip on ice.
Once the kinks are worked out, you'll be safer with it than you are today.
I'm just saying don't get caught up in those fears and close your mind to something that could, potentially, make driving much safer.
If someone has a whole lot of tickets and/or accidents the DMV might tell them to either get one of these or give up the keys. Other than that, I wouldn't want the state to force people into this.
Funny thing is, people will get all worked up about this when these vehicles come out. And, 30 years from now, kids will think that computers have always driven cars.
As for me, I enjoy driving on the open road. So, I'd turn off the auto-nav under those circumstances.
I don't like fighting the morons I see on the city streets in Las Vegas tho'. I'd say 10-15% of the drivers I see here are incompetent. I'd rather let the computer deal with them.