Google has created a car that is capable of driving itself. So successfully, in fact, that it was able to travel 140,000 miles without human intervention.
[they drove from our] Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. — Official Google Blog
My first instinct was to question safety implications of the trek made by these cars, but Google has said that they were also manned with professional drivers that had the ability to override the system as easily as “turning off cruise control”. They also talked to all the appropriate law enforcement agencies before going ahead with the plan.
I think robotic cars will be great in the future — but I hope it’s never made mandatory. Cars aren’t just for getting from point A to point B — it’s sometimes about having fun too. Please don’t replace my car with a boring robot — yet.
