Japan May Be First Country To Have Self-Driving Cars (theoutline.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Monday June 4, 2018 @11:30AM from the time-is-of-the-essence dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Outline: The Olympic Games are an international muscle-flexing competition, where countries show off their technological, architectural, and (oh yeah) athletic prowess to the rest of the world. Now, according to Reuters, Japan is promising a public system of self-driving cars in time for the for the 2020 Olympics, which it's hosting in Tokyo. Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Monday that the investment company SoftBank Group is investing $2.25 billion in order to develop the Cruise, the self driving car acquired by General Motors back in 2016. The country's goal is to have a fully functioning self-driving car system in time for the 2020 Olympics, and a more developed, privatized commercial self-driving car system by 2022. The Cruise has been tested in the U.S. since 2017, but Abe said that it would also be tested on Japanese roads by the end of this fiscal year.

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You know what's easier? by slashmydots · 2018-06-04 12:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

You know what's easier, cheaper, more efficient, and doesn't require technology that won't exist until 2050? Monorails. Or basically anything on a rail. A freaking train even. Trollies. ANYTHING. You know how you get it to not hit something? Put it on a rail. Okay, so they can only go where there are rails. Great, build more rails. That's cheaper than building more self-driving cars. Japan has bullet trains and flawless public transportation of every kind.