Google's Self-Driving Car

What has the search engine powerhouse Google been up to lately? Apparently, they are now in the car business. No they are not selling cars but rather they are designing a driverless car. That is correct, a driverless car. According to Jalopnik.com, Google has been developing this car for over a year and has logged over 140,000 miles. The reason why everything has been hush-hush is the driverless cars resemble Google’s Street View vehicles, the Google Map cars. Google CEO Eric Schmidt was not lying when he said that people should not have to drive. I guess he took personal interest into seeing this come true.

With the development of a driverless car there raises the question of is it even legal? According to California officials, there are no laws that would bar Google from testing such models, as long as there's a human behind the wheel who would be responsible should something go wrong. Google says its test vehicles always have at least three passengers: a driver behind the wheel and two technicians to monitor the software and systems.

Google's software "would be just a big step up from cruise control," said Mike Marando, a spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. "If the vehicle goes too fast, or strays across the line, the human would be responsible for operating the car legally."

As long as Google stays within the law there is absolutely nothing wrong with them testing their cars on the open public streets.

My Opinion: Driving a car is great and having someone else drive is even better. Google trying to advance technology and our lifestyle is admirable. However, G4TV: Attack of the Show has pointed out a significant problem. There has already been an accident involving the car. Granted the driverless vehicle was rear ended by another car but this shows that there are multiple opportunities for more accidents to occur just like this one. Unless they can make this software widely available they probably will not make a dent into the accident rate in America.