The days of self-driving cars are not as far away as you might think. The Californian Legislature has approved new laws permitting the use of self-driving cars on Californian roads. These laws follow the passing of a bill in late May that smoothes the way for autonomous cars.
In yet another automotive first for the state of California, (the California Air Resources Board, or ‘CARB’, pioneered clean air legislature in the 1990s), the State Assembly passed the bill last Wednesday and all that is needed to pass the legislation into law is the signature of the Governor Jerry Brown.
Some of the approved legislation stipulates that any autonomous cars permitted for use in California must be fitted with an easily-activated override function, so that a driver can regain manual control of the car. The car must also be able to remove itself from traffic if its autonomous systems fail.
At the prow of this self-driving phenomenon is internet mega-company Google. Google say their autonomous fleet of vehicles has clocked over 450 000 km without a single accident. Google also say that driver error is to blame for 90% of crashes and that the dream of dramatically reduced death tolls by self-driving cars is the way of the future.
Google have even had a number of state legislators go for rides in their autonomous test vehicles. The general consensus is that there are still a few issues, but that it is way better than most might imagine. For what it’s worth, we’ll reluctantly admit that the might of Google and their research into future vehicle technologies, on the surface of it, seems like a snug fit and reducing road deaths is an important issue facing our generation.
But we’re sorry, because the idea of having to surrender to your Google Earth car (probably a Prius) of the future, twice-a-day (once in the morning to take you to work and again in the afternoon to take you home), sounds like the end of the world to us. We’re petrolheads and we’d be out of a job.
As far as we’re concerned, Google’s endeavors could spell the beginning of the end for the lovely motorised transport you and I enjoy and enthuse over on a daily basis.
