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On Tuesday California Governor Jerry Brown passed Senate Bill 1298, legalizing robot-controlled cars, or self-driving cars (also known as ‘self-driven cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), with high praise from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who says that driverless cars will be a reality within 5 years.
Google has been working hard on driverless car technology and they say that the robot-controlled cars will be more safe and efficient than people-driven cars. They say that there will be less of the people made errors that cause many traffic accidents, as well as the car will not run red lights. While the issue has been raised as to who would be issued a traffic ticket should the self-driving car commit a traffic infraction, Governor Brown seemed less concerned, saying, “Whoever owns the car, I would think. But we’ll work that out. That’s going to be the easiest problem to work out.”
And there is no doubt that there are many positive potential benefits to a self-driving car:
- Those who are unable to drive due to disabilities, such as blindness, will be able to be driven around in the self-driven car. In fact, when we first covered the Google self-driving car, it had been tested by a blind driver.
- Those who have had too much to drink could let their car drive them home.
- Traffic has the potential of being cut down because the driverless cars will chain together with other self-driving cars, using roads and highways in a more efficient manner.
- Drivers could do work, put on makeup, or surf the net on their way to work.
- After your car drops you off at your destination, it can park itself. No more driving around aimlessly, looking for a parking spot.
But the car does not come without concerns. Consumer-rights group, Consumer Watchdog, has concerns that it would enable Google to obtain personal information about the car’s passengers.
Other organizations, such as Caltech, are also working on the same technology, but there is no word about privacy concerns with them and Google is certainly the company gaining the most public attention for this endeavor.
Regardless of whether you are in the “for it” or “against it” camp, there is no denying that the technology is cool. Using video cameras that scope the area around the car, front-end radar sensors, and software that steers the car, it sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, or the Jetsons. Google is currently using Toyota Prius Hybrids and the Lexus RX450h as tester cars, and they have logged over 300,000 driving miles in Nevada, where driverless cars have been legal since last year. Of those 300,000 miles, 50,000 miles required no intervention from human drivers, and the only accident that occurred, a minor fender bender, was when the vehicle was being controlled by a human.
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And adjusting to zooming around in a robot-controlled car will certainly take some getting used to for most. While both California and Nevada legally require that a self-driving car have an actual person in the driver’s seat to be able to take the wheel, or at least hit the brakes, at any time, there will likely be many drivers testing out their new cars with hands hovering closely to the wheel until they get used to the way the car drives. As Governor Brown says, “Anybody who first gets in the car and finds the car is driving will be a little skittish. But they’ll get over it.”
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