Google Smart Car, The Future Is Almost Here

Google Self-Driving vehicles, will it be the future of driving? It is to soon to tell, and Google has not given us a timeline as of yet. They have said that they are not interested in getting into the automotive manufacturing market, but rather want to provide us with the technology of tomorrow, working on the extensive algorithms that are needed to produce a Smart Car.

Nearly 34,000 people were killed in automobile accidents in the United States alone. With the help of a Google driven vehicle, these numbers could drop significantly. There are only three states that allow the testing of  experimental vehicles in the U.S. currently California, Nevada and Florida, which have legislation allowing automakers to test these self-driving vehicles on the roads. In order to prevent an accident caused by the programing of the vehicle a licensed driver needs to be at the controls, even when the vehicle is in control.

In the U.S. Driving is a privilege, not a right as I am sure it is for most places. What if you didn’t need to drive though. Some people don’t like to drive, they travel by bus, plane, and even train. If all vehicles on the road were self-driving and communicated with each other, it could possibly prevent any and all accidents on the roads. Sensing when someone is crossing a street, or even when another car might have ran a stop sign. SAFETY FIRST! These self-driving vehicles are programed by humans, and “To err is human”, will these Smart Cars make deadly errors? Are The Three Laws programed into these cars?

For those of you that don’t know The Three Laws, I am referring to Isaac Asimov’s, Three Laws of Robotics which are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Now these vehicles have been being tested for quite awhile now, and I wasn’t able to find any statistics on a single accident that involved one of these new smart cars, though after reading quite a bit about them, it doesn’t sound like one of these cars has been the cause of an accident though they have probably avoided several that a human driver might not have been able to.

Do you feel that there should be any laws in place for these new smart cars?

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