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Stanford's Self Driving Car Tops 120mph On Racetrack
kkleiner writes with this snippet: "Just as Google's self-driving Prius goes for distance, recently passing 300,000 miles, Stanford's self-driving Audi TTS instead has the need for speed. The Audi, known as Shelley, sped around the Thunderhill Raceway track north of Sacramento topping 120 miles per hour on straightaways. The less than two and a half minutes it took to complete the 3-mile course is comparable to times achieved by professional drivers." Now if only Montana could take a cue from Nevada's rules for self-driving cars, and bring back "reasonable and prudent" speed regulation, driving out west could get a lot more exciting.
I have some HPDE experience of my own and what you're basically describing is how a beginner drives on a race track. I don't know how many "track days" the standford team has done (or can afford for that matter...renting out the whole track is probably a large part of their budget) but I'm guessing the car is more or less a beginner. Once it's done a few events I'm sure it will be trail braking, hitting apexes and tracking out just fine. The real question is when will it be able to acknowledge corner workers and other cars?