Self-driving cars...

[Paul F]

A timely thread. 60 minutes has a story on this tonight.

Some points of the show:

1. Mercedes, Uber, Apple, and other car vendors all working in Silicon Valley on this.
2. Mercedes car has run 20K miles so far with no accident. A small number to be sure, but impressive.
3. During the driving demonstration on the streets and freeways of Silicon Valley, with the journalist, a few incidents happened where the car told the driver to take over.
4. Google has logged 1million miles.
5. The car understood the difference between a stopped car and a car stopping to parallel park. So it stopped behind the car space so the driver could parallel park.
6. Can't handle snow or rain.
7. Can't distinguish police hand gestures vs civilians hand waiving
8. Telsa has hands free highway driving today
9. Issues raised - Hacking - Drivers developing too much trust
10. Google built 25 fully automated cars with a max speed of 25 mph
11. Google cars have been in 9 minor accidents - Google claims they were all the other drivers fault
12. Google says it will accept all liability for its car's actions.
13. Asked when it will be available, the Google person says his goal is to have his 14 year old son own a driverless car in 4.5 years.