Google Gets Driverless License For Nevada Roads

Fluffeh writes "On Monday, the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles approved Google's license application to test autonomous vehicles on the state's roads. The state had approved such laws back in February, and has now begun issuing licenses based on those regulations. The state previously outlined that companies that want to test such vehicles will need an insurance bond of $1 million and must provide detailed outlines of where they plan to test it and under what conditions. Further, the car must have two people in it at all times, with one behind the wheel who can take control of the vehicle if needed. The Autonomous Review Committee of the Nevada DMV is supervising the first licensing procedure and has now approved corresponding plates to go with it, complete with a red background and infinity symbol."

Comments

Re:2 people

[cosm]

TFA fails to mention why two people are required in the test vehicle. I can understand having a "driver" that can take over if something goes wrong, but what is the purpose of the 2nd person?

To hold the driver's beer. It's Nevada, common now...

Re:Google Beta

[DragonWriter]

With Google's insistence to label pretty much all of their projects as "beta" to avoid liability

"Beta" has no direct effect on legal liability. It mainly exists to manage customer expectations about feature stability and functionality.

And, anyway, its not something they do that much anymore.

Plus, posting a $1 million bond liability bond is a strange thing to do to "avoid liability".

On top of this we can think about Google's history of privacy violations. It's obvious they are trying to gain something from this

I think there are lots of really obvious ways you could "gain something" from driverless vehicle technology that don't involve privacy violations.

Starting with licensing driverless vehicle technology to vehicle manufacturers.

I was already shocked when I read about Google Goggles and the way the device works.

Google Goggles isn't a device at all, its software that's available for various devices.

It doesn't process the image on the device itself but instead sends it to Google's servers.

Uh, yeah, it advertises itself as an image-based version of search. Next thing you are going to be surprised that the Google Search app doesn't do the search locally on your device, but sends the search terms to Google's servers.

Combined with Google's facial recognition technology and patent, Google Goggles will give the company outstanding amount of living world and meatspace data.

"living world" and "meatspace" are the same thing.

And it would give them the same amount of information as with the facial recognition technology without the patent, which is a red herring.

Now I can only guess that Google is trying to expand their privacy violations to roads, driving habits and your everyday life.

So? Aside from revealing your personal biases, what value do you think your unsubstantiated guess in this area provides?

Re:Google Beta

[jxander]

What version do you think it's in currently? They've they've clocked nearly 150k miles on this system. For reference, that's over 50 trips from San Fran to NY, NY.

Or if you'd prefer, about 20 complete laps around the perimeter of the lower 48.