Thursday, June 11, 2015

Always A Decade Away

I predict the decade away is the Friedman Unit of autonomous cars.
That’s the dream. But the path to full automation isn’t likely to be smooth or quick. Although Google recently announced that it would soon begin test-driving self-driving cars, many experts said they believed that fully autonomous cars for the public were at least a decade away.

Amazingly when I ride buses and trains I don't have to do anything at all and get to read the twitters without any concerns about taking another life whatsoever.
But that didn’t mean that I could exactly doze off on the road. The self-driving system, for example, can’t handle sharp turns. Both the car and the company warned me not to see the car’s abilities as permission to distract myself, which is a bit like warning the fox to exercise some self-control around that newfangled self-guarding henhouse. The Mercedes issues an alarm when you’ve taken your hands off the wheel for more than 10 seconds.

Still, the car lulled me: With the S550 making most major decisions, I could safely look at incoming Twitter messages while jammed in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The car even promises to respond to emergency situations, like if it senses that you’re veering off the road into the median, or if the vehicle ahead of you suddenly jams on the brakes.