Google Car

[fabfred2012]

Have you all heard about the robot car that Google has driving around to take pictures for Google Maps? What do you think about having cars driving themselves?

Sounds like the movie Demolition Man. Personally I'm all for it. Having cars drive themselves could fix all kinds of problems. Here's a list of things I see that it could fix immediately and some things that it might fix going forward if we moved over to a completely computer controlled network of transportation.

1. Drunk Driving.
2. Road Rage.
3. Bad Drivers (i.e. people that shouldn't have been given a license in the first place)
4. Stop and go traffic (if the cars are somehow synchronized)

If you've seen the movie Minority Report or Demolition Man I'm sure you get the idea.

 

[DiamondWash]

Where are the flying cars yet?

 

[MEP001]

I see one problem with the Google "robot car". What happens if the Google Earth roads are out of whack? I found this while looking at a friend's wash:

Something told either the car or the driver to pull around to the back of the wash and take a photo. Is the robot car going to force a trip through a bay to drive down that road?

 

[mac]

Automated cars are coming. Maybe not in our lifetime, or all at once, but they will come. This will happen incrementally.Already on my 10 year old van I can not start the thing without putting my foot on the brake. I can not drive it at night with the lights off. (If you have to ask why you would do this, you were never a kid with a car at night.) If I come close to backing into something, it beeps at me. It tells me when I need to change the oil. Newer cars can now automatically parallel park for you. DARPA has been sponsoring a competition for several years testing fully automated cars. And lastly the MADD mothers will never go away. "If it saves just one life, it will be worth it." Fortunately by the time this happens, I'll be looking for a fully automated wheel chair.

 

[rph9168]

Mecedes already has tested a car that can drive in traffic by itself. I saw a video of it.

 

[mac]

Actually when you read all the posts about stupid drivers on this site, taking them out of the equation would make many of the operators jobs much easier.