On September 25th earlier this year, California
became the third state in the US, following Nevada and Florida, to pass legislation
in allowing the operation of driverless cars on the road. Two short years
earlier, Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Lab director Sebastian Thrun unveiledGoogle had created the world’s first autonomous car. In
testing, the cars, which were manned by trained operators, drove around
California, from Mountain View to Santa Clara and on to Hollywood Boulevard.
They successfully navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, crossed the Golden Gate
Bridge, and even made it around Lake Tahoe. The test cars logged over 140,000
miles in total. The following year, Thrun
gave a TED talk explaining how autonomous cars could save lives, time, and fuel:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 32,885
motor vehicle deaths in 2010, the leading cause of death among
teenagers. Furthermore, the majority of car accidents can be attributed to
driver error and other human factors (from 57%
to as high as 90%)
that would not be present in driverless cars.
