Thursday, March 17, 2011
Google’s driverless car
It has been an exciting week in the motor industry, with Google releasing new footage of road tests of its driverless car.
The adapted Toyota Prius was seen screeching and tearing its way round a track in San Francisco.
Warning: This video contains mild bad language.
It was a high-speed test. Round every inch of the track the vehicle looked like it had the Stig behind the wheel, but it didn’t, just a lot of technology and one very trusting human passenger.
Google has high hopes for the driverless technology. It believes that it could halve the 1.2 million road fatalities that occur on the world’s roads each year. And it’s already travelled 140,000 miles in real, unsimulated traffic – impressive.
But what would driverless technology mean for us? Sure, it would be nice to be chauffeured at our convenience, but would we still need to take driving tests and would we still need to obtain young driver insurance before we took to the roads.
My greatest fear is Wall-E style idleness: us humans become less and less capable as machines take over the most basic tasks until, ultimately, we’re left with no competence at all.
Sure, we might be behind the wheel to take over in the event that the technology malfunctions, but what would we actually be able to do if we’ve little to no experience of driving?
Labels: driverless technology, motor industry, young driver insurance
#
posted by Fuse @ 4:55 AM 
Post a Comment