Google is developing - and has extensively tested - technology to build an autonomously self-driving car, Google said on Saturday.

Moreover, Google engineers have already driven a fleet of them around the San Francisco Bay Area, to the tune of over 140,000 miles, Google said in a blog post.

Google said that the cars "just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard," Sebastian Thrun, a distinguished Google software engineer, said in the blog post. "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."

Although described as being in the "experimental stage," Google said it hoped that its technology would be used to develop the self-driving cars of tomorrow, cutting the lives lost in auto accidents - 1.2 million, according to the World Health Organization, by as much as half.

The cars themselves leverage technology used in tests sponsored by DARPA, which has sponsored competitions to develop an autonomous car that can self-navigate off road and on city streets. In 2006, the agency tested city driving, and, in 2007, involved negotiating a "city" on an abandoned airbase. Google said that it had hired several members of those teams, including: Chris Urmson, the technical team leader of the CMU team that won the 2007 Urban Challenge; Mike Montemerlo, the software lead for the Stanford team that won the 2005 Grand Challenge; and Anthony Levandowski, who built the world's first autonomous motorcycle that participated in a DARPA Grand Challenge.

To reassure Bay Area drivers suddenly nervous about sharing the road with a self-driving car, Google said that the cars were always manned, and could be taken over in an instant by a driver. Google did not say how many times this had occurred.

"We always have a trained safety driver behind the wheel who can take over as easily as one disengages cruise control," Thrun wrote. "And we also have a trained software operator in the passenger seat to monitor the software. Any test begins by sending out a driver in a conventionally driven car to map the route and road conditions. By mapping features like lane markers and traffic signs, the software in the car becomes familiar with the environment and its characteristics in advance."

Local police were also briefed, Google said.

Jarby wrote:

Public transport of the future!

Google Developing a Self-Driving Car

Mankind is getting fucking lazy

Randy96 wrote:

Shows how lazy the human species is. I guess, you could use it allow disabled people to drive. >_>

Pokebis wrote:

Or minors to get places they need to be without an escort. I always wanted something like this so I could actually, you know, go places without having to consult my parents to use their time to take me somewhere. Or get to school in the five minute drive it takes rather than setting aside an entire hour to get there in the morning because I have to be shuttled to a different, further away school first.
Also this will probably help traffic congestion and decrease the probability of accidents. Just because it seems like a convenience things, doesn't mean it doesn't have other, important benefits (like saving lives).
Now you can drink and not have to worry about driving.

Wojjan wrote:

Fuck you butterflies don't get to use the bus.

Powerdrone wrote:

Scary...

But not as scary as those PEOPLE driven cars.

Google said that the cars were always manned, and could be taken over in an instant by a driver.

Adarin wrote:

tl;dr

Firo Prochainezo wrote:

Adarin wrote:

tl;dr

Jarby wrote:

TV TAUGHT ME HOW TO FEEL

NOW REAL LIFE HAS NO APPEAL

E-Hooker wrote:

Jarby wrote:

TV TAUGHT ME HOW TO FEEL

NOW REAL LIFE HAS NO APPEAL

SHUT UP
hi

Adarin wrote:

SPOILER

Google said that the cars were always manned, and could be taken over in an instant by a driver.

Of course, a self-driving car would be convenient and decreasing the number of deaths caused by road accidents is an important issue, but assuming that this will be a feature of the self-driving cars, if, for some reason, the car needed to be driven manually, how many people would be skilled enough to take the wheel, especially in the case of an emergency?

If cars are being driven automatically, then the number of skilled drivers would decrease simply because people are becoming reliant on its ability to drive itself. This becomes not really a case where humans are lazy creatures (which they are), but a case where humans are increasingly dependent and reliant on technologies that requires less training meaning that in the process of gaining more advanced technologies, the general population would be falling backwards in terms of skill.

Having such complex programming in a car, it can probably also be sabotaged by whoever wanted to cause trouble, in a worst-case scenario, it can potentially be used for murder or manslaughter.

It's a good idea and all, but it should probably be released to those with a justified reason to have it, rather than allowing it to be used for minors and would be drunk drivers - after all, like I said before, in the case of an emergency, how would they drive?

Powerdrone wrote:

How does the car stop at a red light?

strager wrote:

TL;DR Having such a car would cause the population of people who know how to drive well to dwindle.

I have to disagree. This car is designed to special cases; I really doubt a self-driving car will be effective enough driving itself for a few years. When (not if?) it is, the situation will be just like automatic transmissions in comparison to manual. (A lot of people can still drive manual, but it doesn't mean driving an automatic makes you unable to operate the vehicle.)

I have not read the original article.

strager wrote:

A lot of people can still drive manual

Powerdrone wrote:

How does the car stop at a red light?

dNextGen wrote:

Powerdrone wrote:

How does the car stop at a red light?

Beuchi-chan wrote:

catastrophic failure