Google's new self-driving car puts cyclist safety first

Obesity just got harder to fight.

A huge advantage (along with all the safety stuff) is that these cars can drive themselves without anyone in them. You don't need to own a car anymore, once you're at your destination, the car goes off on its own to drive someone else to where they want to go. No more need of space for parking, we can free up our streets for people rather than idle metal boxes. Think of it as a cross between a taxi and zipcar. Taxi drivers are going to hate it.

I wonder if they'll ever bring in gps speed limiters for normal cars. Maybe the big brother concerns would quash that.

They did have those black boxes tied to payg insurance premiums for a bit.

A few weeks ago I drove from London up to Glasgow. 400 miles of completely uneventful motorway apart from one sharp stop when traffic backed up in some roadworks. A computer could have simply driven me there and I'd have been reading, sleeping, playing cards with the wife, whatever.

Likewise, almost all of the bad driving we complain about is due to conscious/unconscious actions by the driver - overtaking when there's a queue ahead, passing too close or where there's a traffic island, etc. All of that goes away because the car will be programmed to hold back unless absolutely certain the road is clear and wide enough.

The only thing that worries me is its field of vision at T-junctions - can it see far enough out and around? There is a T-junction near my house where a road joins a long straight downhill section (40mph on a bike). Would it pull out in front of me?

Google's engineers have admitted there have been a few teething problems:
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/love_0_3449.jpg

Whilst I echo many of the concerns raised before, they all miss one valuble point.

These cars are not distracted by yesterday's arguement or lack of sleep, make up, mobile phones, sat navs, what's one radio/CD, is it better to a get a latte from McD's or a skinny mocha from Starbucks, will there be any parking when I get to work, the nice motor heading the other way, the good looking person at the bus stop.......

They are mindless and programmed to drive forward until an obstacle is detected and to respond correctly, they don't care if they are late and think they can save a few second by squeezing past.

I for one, do think it's a good step forward and hope it happens in my life time. A stress free journey into work during which I can read artlice on websites about how safe the roads are for all users.

I think it's great. Imagine, just sending the car to pick up the kids from school. Imagine having one drink too many and using an app to have your car come and get you.

The future is there before us.

The reduction of car speed limits in built up areas is the future.

Cycle lanes are not the way forward, the reduction in speed of cars is the way forward.

Looking forward to the test done in Detroit.

I ride my self drive bike (i.e. no handed) at 25 mph often. I'll fit some foam to my handlebars just in case anything goes wrong. All will be fine.

Seriously, as somebody above said. Let's just limit all cars to 25mph on on inner city streets.

I think it's a lot safer taking the steering wheel off some of the morons you encounter. But what an ugly little bugger, I'd fall off laughing if I came across one for real.

why don't we just limit normal cars driven by people to 25 mph, make them look like tellytubbies and cover them in foam.

It's hard to look macho when you're sat inside a child's toy so all the fuckwits will just stay quiet and get themselves to work and back. Furthermore, if the vehicles are restricted to 25mph, those of us with a fair turn of pace in our legs will be able to slipstream them and maybe give them a run for their money on the flat.

Cyclist friendly features are foam bumpers and flexible windscreens? WTF? How about they don't bloody hit us in the first place!

It seems to me that Walt and Linda would be far better served by getting on a bike themselves - I guess these cars have a place but as 50% of journeys are less than 7 miles a significant number of the prospective passengers could just get on a bloody bike.

For a lot of people cars are about status and power, not transport. These vehicles won't satisfy that basic requirement. If you can't bully someone with your car, what's the point?

They're going to need to go faster than 25mph in London, to keep away from all the taxi drivers trying to set fire to them.

Note, Google's 700,000 miles were done on a specific set of roads with quiet traffic and were 3d digitized extensively. They say they will trial the cars on busy roads later.

And airplane autopilot is not the same, planes don't drive themselves along roads with multiple hazard types.

And whilst the cars may get HD image feeds and LIDAR etc, their AI struggles to recognise the simplest of things on those images.

The cars driving at 25mph speaks volumes about Google's confidence in them - and it shows that split second reaction time means nothing if you don't know everything that you need to react to.

Having said that, I do hope that the technology is safer and continues to get progressively safer. I like the fact that the cars are electric.