Thinking about how driverless cars will influence how we think about driving, Eric Jaffe wonders if it would be possible to program one for road rage: I posed that question to Chris Urmson, head of Google’s self-driving car program, when I rode in the car on city streets in late April. In a strict technical sense, sure, the car … Continue reading Where Self-Driving Cars Will Take Us
Those are the confident words of Anthony Levandowski, one of the engineers profiled in a New Yorker piece on driverless cars: For Levandowski, the stakes first became clear three years ago. His fiancée, Stefanie Olsen, was nine months pregnant at the time. One afternoon, she had just crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on her way … Continue reading “A Self-Driving Car Will Save Your Life”
A reader writes: Just a quick response to the question: My mother is 88 years old. She’s in great shape for 88, very self-sufficient. But she’s not really physically fit to drive and thankfully gave up her car keys willingly about 8 years ago. Many “seasoned citizens” are decidedly NOT willing to give up their … Continue reading Do We Really Need The Self-Driving Car? Ctd
Kaid Benfield and Lee Epstein aren’t convinced that intelligent vehicles and automated highways are a good thing: While it may be conceivable for bright engineers, planners and designers to come up with ways to fit such systems carefully and properly into people-first, walkable urban environments, at a minimum that fitting needs to be done as … Continue reading Do We Really Need The Self-Driving Car?
by Patrick Appel
The legal issues are as complex as the technical ones:
Who will be responsible for their operation — the car companies or the drivers? What happens, for example, when a highway patrol officer pulls over a self-driving car? Who gets the ticket?
Tom Vanderbilt expands on this point in a recent post:
Google is on a mission: Thrun and his Google colleagues, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are convinced that smarter vehicles could help make transportation safer and more efficient: Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form … Continue reading Self-Driving Cars Come Of Age
President Obama’s proposal to classify broadband Internet service as a Title II utility cheered advocates of net neutrality, but FCC Chairmam Tom Wheeler has his own ideas for how to handle the issue, which don’t quite square with the president’s: The dissonance between Obama and Wheeler has the makings of a major policy fight affecting multibillion-dollar industries. The … Continue reading The Public Isn’t Neutral On Net Neutrality
A reader begs to differ with this one pushing for driverless buses: My spouse, who does transportation planning consulting, tells me that driverless or not, buses (and subways, etc.) must have a person on board who is responsible for keeping order and handling emergencies. This role is currently filled by the bus driver. A switch to self-driving buses will not … Continue reading Creative Destruction Is So Cute, Ctd
Brad Plumer deflates some of the hype over Google’s new driverless car prototype: Now, before anyone gets too excited, note that self-driving cars are still a ways off from reality, especially given all the legal and regulatory hurdles they face. (And, for now, Google’s cars will only go 25 miles per hour — so the cars won’t run on highways.) But … Continue reading Creative Destruction Is So Cute, Ctd
This video of Google’s driverless car prototype is pinging around the blogosphere: [youtube http://youtu.be/CqSDWoAhvLU] Megan Garber describes the car as “a cross between a Volkswagen Beetle and a Disneyland ride”: Google’s prototypes aren’t meant to convey ideals so much as they’re meant to convey … familiarity. Friendliness. The reassurance that comes, implicitly, with being part of “the great multitude.” They are, … Continue reading Creative Destruction Is So Cute
