Google robo cars drive selves on public streets
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Google has built a fleet of cars that drive themselves, and over the past several months, these robotic vehicles have driven over 140,000 miles on public roads, from the Pacific Coast Highway to the famous twists and turns of San Francisco's Lombard Street.
As the company revealed on Saturday morning with a blog post, each car is equipped with video cameras, radar sensors, and a laser range finder that alerts the vehicle to other traffic, and they navigate using maps previously collected by cars that were driven by good old fashioned human beings.
The self-driving cars, Google says, are never unmanned. A human sits in the driver seat and can take control of the car at anytime, and according to a New York Times story that coincided with Google's blog post, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has deemed the cars legal because a human can override the automated controls.
But a staff counsel for the department also says that the cars are "ahead of the law" in many areas. "“If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle,” he tells The Times. It's unclear, for instance, who would be responsible if the car caused an accident.
Google says it has briefed the local police on the cars. "We always have a trained safety driver behind the wheel who can take over as easily as one disengages cruise control," its blog post reads.
The company's blog post says it has driven the cars on public streets "recently." But one video – captured by a random driver who didn't realize at the time what he was seeing – indicates that the vehicles have been on the roads since November of last year:
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By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Google has built a fleet of cars that drive themselves, and over the past several months, these robotic vehicles have driven over 140,000 miles on public roads, from the Pacific Coast Highway to the famous twists and turns of San Francisco's Lombard Street.
As the company revealed on Saturday morning with a blog post, each car is equipped with video cameras, radar sensors, and a laser range finder that alerts the vehicle to other traffic, and they navigate using maps previously collected by cars that were driven by good old fashioned human beings.
The self-driving cars, Google says, are never unmanned. A human sits in the driver seat and can take control of the car at anytime, and according to a New York Times story that coincided with Google's blog post, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has deemed the cars legal because a human can override the automated controls.
But a staff counsel for the department also says that the cars are "ahead of the law" in many areas. "“If you look at the vehicle code, there are dozens of laws pertaining to the driver of a vehicle, and they all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle,” he tells The Times. It's unclear, for instance, who would be responsible if the car caused an accident.
Google says it has briefed the local police on the cars. "We always have a trained safety driver behind the wheel who can take over as easily as one disengages cruise control," its blog post reads.
The company's blog post says it has driven the cars on public streets "recently." But one video – captured by a random driver who didn't realize at the time what he was seeing – indicates that the vehicles have been on the roads since November of last year:
READ MORE
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