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Report: Google Partners With Ford To Make Self-Driving Cars (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new report from Yahoo Autos says Google and Ford plan to announce a partnership to build self-driving cars. "By pairing with Google, Ford gets a massive boost in self-driving software development; while the automaker has been experimenting with its own systems for years, it only revealed plans this month to begin testing on public streets in California. Google has 53 test vehicles on the road in California and Texas, with 1.3 million miles logged in autonomous driving. By pairing with Ford, the search-engine giant avoids spending billions of dollars and several years that building its own automotive manufacturing expertise would require. Earlier this year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company was looking for manufacturing partners that would use the company's self-driving system, which it believes could someday eliminate the roughly 33,000 annual deaths on U.S. roads." Automotive News reported on the same plans independently, saying, "It isn't clear whether Ford would design a purpose-built vehicle for Google or supply a standard production car fitted with the sensors and computers that the car needs to guide itself down the road."
FORD = Fixed Or Repaired Daily or Found On Road Dead
Just what we need, the Google Pinto!
According to the link, the first such automated train line opened in 1967. That 50 years later the vast majority of trains remain human-operated, is a sign of failure.
Do enlighten me then. What is the train-driver ("engineer") supposed to do, that a computer-program can not do? A program much simpler, than the kind, that can read anthropocentric road-signs and judge intentions of human drivers on a 4-way stop?
A train driver gets paid salary, health-benefits, and retirement plan — not insignificant monies. On contrast, the drivers of the cars being discussed would be in the car anyway, even if they don't have to drive it it, so the savings are very small.
I do not deny, that a self-driving car is useful. But the hardware and software required to achieve that is vastly more complex. Automating trains would've been the logical first step — the way black-and-white TV was a precursor to color. And yet, for all the advances in the self-driving cars, my daily ride to work is still operated by a meat-bag — who always either under- or overshoots the boarding platform...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.