Google Plans To Eliminate Human Interaction While Driving - Are You Ready To Give Up Your Right To Drive?

Through five years and 700,000 miles of testing, Google left one big question about its self-driving car technology unresolved: How would it fit into the rest of the auto industry?

Finally last week, in the form of a cute-as-a-koala electric buggy, came an answer: It won't.

Everything about the new test program that Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed last week, from the design of its two-seat prototypes to the decision to test them on city streets instead of highways, points toward a personal transportation system that directly challenges the driver-centered, ownership-based business model the auto industry has relied on for a century.

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MBCLS07 - 6/2/2014 1:39:31 PM

+1 Boost

Step one of the plan to transition everyone to mass transit. Politicians/statists have been trying for decades to move people away from their cars and into public transportation, thus far without much success. The main barrier has been drivers' preference to travel when/where they want in privacy. Self-driving cars overcome these barriers while, at the same time, removing a degree of control from the individual. Inevitably, individuals will relinquish more and more control and privacy until there isn't any left and the "car" evolves into gov't controlled mass transit. While it may seem convenient and in some ways safer (drunk drivers, bad drivers, etc.), it isn't worth the sacrifice of individual autonomy and privacy this will lead to.

nikejk - 6/2/2014 11:24:31 PM

+2 Boost

"Give up your right to drive" give me a break, media loves focusing everything on taking away privacy and rights. Do you really think when driverless cars are released in the next decade they are going to be fully autonomous? No, no one would buy them. They will have a button to switch from autonomous to semi-autonomous to manual, and it will stay that way for decades to come until people begin not caring for driving at all. In which case, the cars will still have a manual override.

ExarSadow - 6/3/2014 12:07:56 AM

+1 Boost

I agree, yes maybe city owned, zip car driverless cars won't have steering wheels, but those will be for mass transit. Consumer vehicles will never not include a manual option.