Self-Driving Cars Are Coming

By Cornelius Nunev


Larry Burns, former R&D chief of General Motors, is looking forward to driverless automobiles. He believes that they will fill entire United States fleets by 2020. By 2015, however, customers should get a good look at the technology in easily available designs.

Rethinking mobility

With driverless vehicles, people will be able to do whatever they want in the car. They could take a phone call, play a game or even do business on the trip into work. People do not have to put any time into thinking about driving the car. Distracted driving will not be a problem, and fewer accidents will come. Emissions will also decrease quite a bit, as people will have fewer, lighter automobiles in cities.

Google blazing the trail

Radar and video cameras are put to the driverless automobiles to be able to detect road dangers or stop signs. They position the automobile on the road very well. Google has gotten a ton of attention with its test drive of driverless vehicles. It has used Prius and Audi TT versions to test drive the system on public roads. In fact, Google has already test driven the program for thousands of miles.

Due to a separate human driver, there was one accident while the self-driving system was active. Drivers can take over the system in the car at any point.

GM attempted driverless automobiles in 2007

In 2007, GM entered a driverless Chevrolet Tahoe in a 55-mile race sponsored by the United States DARPA (DARPA). The race occurred in Victorville, Calif., and the self-driving system in the Tahoe (nicknamed "Boss") used familiar systems, from cameras and radar to global positioning satellites. Boss won the race, reports Automotive News.

Good functions

By 2015, most consumer vehicles will have some of the necessary benefits required for a driverless system, although Burns states they won't be available fully until 2020. Self-driving systems will work with a lot of different things to promote roadway safety. They will have collision avoidance, lane-keeping technology and adaptive cruise control.

Insurance businesses a stumbling block

Insurance will be one of the biggest difficulties that have to be overcome for the driverless automobiles to work. Security regulators and insurance companies will have difficulty figuring out fault in the case of an accident if both vehicles were self-driving automobiles.

Learn about Google's driverless




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