Google's Self-Driving Cars: 300,000 Miles Logged, Not a Single Accident 465
An anonymous reader writes "The automated cars are slowly building a driving record that's better than that of your average American. From the article: 'Ever since Google began designing its self-driving cars, they've wanted to build cars that go beyond the capabilities of human-piloted vehicles, cars that are much, much safer. When Sebastian Thrun announced the project in 2010, he wrote, "According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half."
New data indicate that Google's on the right path. Earlier this week the company announced that the self-driving cars have now logged some 300,000 miles and "there hasn't been a single accident under computer control." (The New York Times did note in a 2010 article that a self-driving car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light, so Google must not be counting the incidents that were the fault of flawed humans.)'"
Rear Ended (Score:5, Funny)
The GoogleMobile was behaving properly, and was stopped. It had no possible way to evade the puny human that hit it.
However, after the accident, the GoogleMobile was heard asking another car, "Hey, hot mama, wanna kill all humans?"
Re:what is the issue??? (Score:5, Funny)
It's hard to imagine being found at-fault when you are stopped and rear-ended.
Especially when the self-driving car has full video, lidar, and radar coverage of the entire event. And really good lawyers.
Re:Rear Ended (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, yeah, so I rear ended you. We should exchange insurance details.
I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't do that.
Re:what is the issue??? (Score:4, Funny)
geekoid has revealed himself as one of the hoi palloi that has no choice but to drive himself around.
Come GigaplexNZ, let us retire to the study for brandy and cigars, so that we may laugh at geekoid behind his back.
Reminded of Schlock Mercenary with this... (Score:4, Funny)
While I agree in the near term, in the long term I'm reminded of This [schlockmercenary.com].
- While it may seem harsh that the 31st-century equivalent of "Driving Under the Influence" carries with it the death penalty, this is due to an inherent inequivalency between MOUI and DUI.
With DUI, you need only climb into your vehicle while under the influence of alchohol or drugs and attempt to drive it home.
With MOUI you must disable a number of safety systems designed to prevent idiots like you from manually operating their vehicles while inebriated, overtired, wasted, decaffeinated, angry, emotionally distraught, or suffering from hormonal disorders like PMS or testosterone poisoning (the latter having been positively identified as a leading cause of stupidity among males between the ages of puberty and death). After disabling the safety systems (which task almost certainly requires ice-cold sobriety), you must decide to switch the vehicle to a manual mode of operation. In some cases, this requires installing a manual mode of operation.
Other examples would include 'johnny taxi' in some movies. You don't NEED to have manual operation modes once you reach a certain sophistication, worst case you have a sort of protected mode 'guided direction' where you provide steering information - but the car still worries about avoiding accidents, and will override you to do so.
Manual driven vehicles would be restriction to 'special hazard' zones and conditions where they just haven't programmed a vehicle to be able to avoid all the hazards yet. Perhaps a dock loading zone where you have to worry about something being dropped on you from overhead.