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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."
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?
I wonder who's going to be immortalised as the first person to be killed by a computer-controlled car?
Having seen the way most humans drive, I trust the Google'mobile much more than my bio-brethren.
This signature is false.
Probably some poor mechanic working on said car, When owner calls it home whilst still up on the Car Jack.
"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".
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.
Google Goggles isn't a device at all, its software that's available for various devices.
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.
"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.
So? Aside from revealing your personal biases, what value do you think your unsubstantiated guess in this area provides?
And what, exactly, makes you think you have any privacy, or expectation of any privacy, on public roads?
Because:
(1) Google's "non-working Beta software" often works better than software from other companies that purports to be ready for general release,
(2) For most software purposes on the internet, there isn't the kind of immediate public safety concern that justifies regulation of what vehicles are allowed on public roadways.
Insofar as thee have been actual credible accusations of privacy violations at Google, governments -- both in the EU and the US -- have stepped in.
If you have information on cases where that has not occurred, you should provide specifics, rather than vague handwringing.
Though, preferably, in an appropriate place -- even if you had a point, without some nexus beyond a connection to the same company, it would still be off-topic in a thread on Google's driverless car technology.
As a pretty firm believer in the principal of legality as opposed to the rule of lynch mobs, I'd like to see some credible evidence that the "CEO's and higher level people" actually committed offenses for which jailing is the punishment prescribed by law before accepting that they ought to be put in jail.
Google Gets Driverless License For Nevada Roads
1. It is not driverless as there has to be a driver behind the wheel at all times.
2. From the term "driverless license" it seems that they are comparing it to a "driver's license" which is not true. What is actually being issued is an "autonomous testing business license and license plates:.
It is a license to test autonomous vehicle under very strict guidelines.
A much better headline would have been "Google gets license to test autonomous vehicles on Nevada roads"; less flashy but much more accurate
Google has been testing fully autonomous cars in the Bay area for years without any incidents. I would hardly call it 'beta' in the sense of beta software. There's also a requirement that two people be in the car while it's running. It's not as if Google will let hundreds of these cars out on the streets of Nevada with nobody inside to stop them. Not only will Google have $1 million in liability coverage, the lives of two of their own employees per vehicle will be on the line. I'm not too worried about them getting in accidents (at least not of their own fault).
And what, exactly, makes you think you have any privacy, or expectation of any privacy, on public roads?
I think the answer has already been given by the SCOTUS in the warrantless GPS tracking case: see here for details. The SCOTUS decided that, even though drivers used public roads, the amount of tracking the police was doing was orders of magnitude above the normal expectation for a public place, both in individual tracking and in the sheer number of trackers that could be active simultaneously. Of course, the decision in this case applies to governments, but I believe the same arguments work identically for the Google car.
Considering how people drive around here I can't see how a driverless car can be any worse...
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Congrats to Google and Nevada for getting this going.
Smart money is a drunk driver, who does something far too stupid for the computer to compensate for, and dies after hitting the thing.
"Is Google putting a gun to my head? No... I can choose not to use the internet."
better yet, you can use the internet but choose not to use any of googles services
there are lots of search engines....google it if you dont belive me.
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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.
This signature is false.
First a horseless carriage, now a driver-less car?
Next thing you know there will be a box that just sits in front of you, with a window to the world!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
While I don't share the paranoid viewpoints of some, your argument fails from the outset. Google may not be holding a gun to my head, but a poorly designed AI car can certainly cause as much damage as a pistol (if not more) Let alone the damage that could be caused if poorly designed AI cars achieve fleet numbers.
That said, I trust Google on this one (well, Google plus the powers that be along the approval process) Putting out a shoddy product in this venture would cause a Torches and Pitchforks riot the likes of which haven't been seen in my lifetime. And Google knows it.
This signature is false.
So, why the hell do you use Google's non-working beta software when you can find released software on the Internet? Why the hell do you give them your personal information to sell to advertisers? It's time for *YOU* to step in and do something about them.
Good God man, nobody is forcing Google on you.
+1 Disagree
What answer? Attaching devices to your car was obviously illegal! How about the real problem: plate readers, which can easily achieve total surveillance of road traffic. But a ruling against those would raise questions about the millions of other government cameras monitoring the public. And at this point questioning those is simply not going to be allowed.
I wonder who's going to be immortalised as the first person to be killed by a computer-controlled car?
Anyone know the immortal name of the first person to be killed by a person-controlled car?
Goolash. Another fine dish tainted.
Task Mangler
except gps is probably an integral part of the nav system of the driverless cars, and to avoid and anti privacy claims to use the car it will probably have clause in what ever you sign when you buy the car that you accept their tracking you.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Well... I do; for the US that is.
It was Henry Bliss. He was a real estate agent in NY (no surprise here), killed by a taxicab (still no surprise).
What is interesting, it was an electric car. We got to stay with gas just for the sake of children. http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/09/0913first-us-pedestrian-killed-by-car/
Why would he be particularly immortalized? For example if you're looking for the first human to be killed by robots, you don't have to wait for "I, robot" to become reality as that happened already back in 1979. Doesn't mean that robots have went away, people are quite regularly maimed or killed for neglecting safety zones, getting caught in presses and grinders and such. My prediction is that the first person killed by a computer-controlled car will be a Darwin Award winner that would have been killed by a human driver too, had there been one. Don't get me wrong, a computer-controller car won't be better than the people who programmed it and it surely will have bugs, but that one can be refined and get better whereas today every year we let loose a new generation of unskilled teens on the road.
Perhaps the best analogy is healthcare, you know those life-and-death situations you'd think keep everyone on their toes constantly. Well, nurses and doctors are humans too and they make mistakes, not often but they do. Electronic systems that make sure people always get the right medication in the right dosage at the right time, that they don't get dangerous combinations or medicines they're allergic to has helped save lives. Start counting the times the system corrects the nurses versus the times the nurses corrects the system and you'll find out who is actually the more important part of the two.
And that's why I think computer driven cars will win out in the end, they will always stick to protocol. They'll obey all speed limits, keep distance to those in front, always change lanes cleanly, always signal, always yield, always drive defensively and eventually all the accidents that don't happen because a human was tired or angry or sloppy or fiddling with the radio or his phone or whatnot will outperform the "creative" thinking capability of humans. Our ability to make good split-second decisions in an emergency situation is overrated, not to mention the choices are rather limited to break, turn and possibly in a few situations give gas. Many people panic and actually make it worse than just slamming the brakes.
I expect these cars also will have the ability to record near-accidents which you can use for analysis, you don't actually have to have an accident. Here we just managed to perform an emergency brake for a pedestrian who suddenly walked out into the road, could we have done better? Was our response optimal given the data we had? I see a whole new level of preventive improvement possible here. There's no significant learning for me from having one incident every decade, but if you can collect thousands of situations from millions of drivers it can learn to handle the 0.01% situations that we never have any training for or guidelines for what to do.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Aren't all cars computer controlled to some level. What is fly by wire ? There is GPS, obstacle avoidance ... What about Volvos embarrassing video
Effectively creating a moral hazard where people will less likely to be be careful in how they drive or walk.
Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Voz4dosVGSM
But in the first demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZwS9izm4E
Generally, an emergency would be that last time you should take over. A production quality auto-driving car is going to be better at handling an emergency than 90% of people. And many emergencies can happen to fast for a human to change focus like that.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
No, I don't, because I opt out through the use of Ghostery (I do use GMail, though, but all those parts are exactly identical to any other third-party email host). As far as the Android thing goes: I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed if they did that. You know, given that they make the source available and you can get root access on many of the phones and all that.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
My personal feeling is that insurance rates are going to drive the adoption of self driving cars. Once the insurance companies realize that they have a lower error rate than humans (never tired, drunk, distracted, etc) and that they can tell who was at fault in an accident (almost certainly the other guy) you'll see serious incentives to keep cars in auto-drive.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
That sounds like the opposite of being immortalised.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
150k miles on real roads.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
You cant be serious. The only reason I dont drive is because I hate driving, especially commuter hour traffic. I consider driving to be one of the most mundane tasks a human has to perform (Ironing clothes comes a close second). In a driverless car, I can read the morning news, while I commute. At somepoint, it would become really reliable, that the car would drive on its own anywhere. It would take children to school on its own, come back pick up my wife and get her to work, come back and pick me up for work. Again if any one in my family needs a car, they just have to ask, it can drive itself. And think of the taxis, pooled community cars.
I believe at some point change the infrastructure would be more efficient, but it is not required (atleast in Google's design). And to answer your question, it will do what a human does. Find a safe place to stop and stop. Ask you for instructions, or information.
Ahhh, the kilomile. Glad to see metric catching on.
For those interested there's 52 800 000 centifeet in a kilomile, and 83 milliinches in a microfoot.
What is the point of a driverless car?
In order of importance:
1. Increased safety. Did you know that in the US, 1 out of 9,000 people die in a car accident each year? That is freaky high. Over a lifetime that works out to almost a 1% chance. Autonomous cars can be much safer, are never distracted and never get tired.
2. Increased access. Folks who are blind or have other disabilities cannot get around by car. Same for older people or people to young to drive. Same for drunk people..
3. Increased productivity. A car can be your office. Get work done or spend time doing personal reading.
4. Increased fuel efficiency. Autonomous cars will eventually have the ability to work together to draft and save gas milage
5. Decreased costs. Autonomous cars will eventually lead to services where you do not have to buy a car. Simply pay for a ride and have a car show up when you need it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
People with your mentality are the reason progress takes as long as it does.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Can you give us a car-analogy for that?
According to Google; 150 000 mi = 241 401.6 kilometers
According to Wikipedia; A new-style VW beetle is 4.129m (4129mm)
A bit of calculation shows that this Google Autonomous Car has driven the length of about 58.5 million VW beetles
Is the TSA putting a gun to my head. No. I can choose not to ever leave my house. Is Google putting a gun to my head? No... I can choose not to use the internet.
You are comparing apples and oranges. You are not given a real choice with the TSA. Considering how integral flight is to today's society, the choice between not flying and getting felt up and/or irradiated is not a real choice. You can't go to another airport/terminal that is willing to treat its customers better because the TSA is government enforced. If you remove the requirement, the TSA would probably disappear and be replace with private counterparts that treat the airlines' customers much more reasonably. If enough people feel like they need to be felt up in order to feel safe, airports will probably start getting sectioned off so those people can go through separate security lines and use separate planes in a separate parts of the airport.
Google's services are optional and easy to avoid. Most if not all of their services you can get from other companies. Nothing is forcing companies to collect your data. They could choose to use a different business model is they thought they could get a reasonable chunk of the market. You do not have to stop using the Internet to avoid Google. Currently, you do have to avoid the airport in order to avoid the TSA.