August 27th, 2005
Are You Ready for Cars that Drive Themselves?
By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
I must admit that this scares me more than a little, but GM announced that it will be releasing a car that will be able to literally drive itself on the highway–even in heavy traffic. Apparently it will use cameras and lasers that will all be hooked into a computer that will make decide how to drive your car for you. I know that Mercedes-Benz and perhaps a few other car makers already have similar features that can slow down your cruise control when you get too close to another vehicle to prevent you from hitting them, but this goes beyond that, literally doing all of the driving for you. I don’t know about you, but I would personally stay far away from one of these things if I saw it driving itself down the highway. There’s just something about a car driving itself that I can’t bring myself to completely trust considering that at high speeds even a small mistake can have huge consequences. Hopefully by the time this is released in 2008 (if it’s on schedule) they’ll have considered all of the variables that highway driving might throw at it.
Source: AutoBlog
Oldster says:
PLEASE tell it won’t be running on an MS operating system! A blue screen isn’t something you want to see at 80 MPH. “Nothing can possibly go wrong, go wrong, go wrong…”
August 27th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Alice says:
Just hit Control+Alt+delete as you skid to the side of the road…..
August 27th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Benjamin says:
Honestly this would be fine if every other car on the road was doing the same thing and they were all talking to eachother over wifi… But we’re adding in the human factor and mixing that with the human driving factor. That’s just scary as hell!
moocower.blogspot.com
August 27th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
James B says:
I want a car that can get out of and into those postage stamp sized parking spaces. I can zip around town OK, but I really suck at backing up and parallel parking.
August 28th, 2005 at 1:51 am
Mike says:
These should be mandatory for EVERYONE!!! young people could have cheaper car insurance because they wouldnt think they are cool and wreck all the time, old people wouldnt have to worry that they cant see or 2mph seems fast to them, and us middle of the road wierdos can talk on the cell phone, put makeup on, and watch the hot women i nthe car next to us
Mike
this REALLY should be mandatory for ALL cars SOON!!
August 28th, 2005 at 3:55 am
John Corliss says:
Yes… think of all the fun you could have by getting in front of such a car and then slowing down abruptly.
August 28th, 2005 at 5:26 am
Ron Ingram says:
I don’t care about a car that drives itself, i want a car that doesn’t run on fossil fuels!
August 28th, 2005 at 6:21 am
David Johnston says:
Yeah, I’d love a car that ran on something other than gas. I’m hoping it doesn’t take too long before hydrogen powered cars hit the market and become mainstream.
August 28th, 2005 at 7:45 am
deww says:
I took a ride in a car that drove itself in a Toyota showroom when I was visiting Japan in 2004. It was on a track and I have no idea how it works. It was a fun ride. The turning was not smooth at all and it went fairly slow. The car also braked when it felt that it was too close to another car. I’m not sure how that compares to what’s really been in development, but at least the one I rode in, I didn’t feel it was ready.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
yann says:
be serious…. do you really think a self driven car will be able to drive past speed limit?
I sure hope it doesn’t, or else I already can think of the conversation with cops “no really, it’s not me, it’s the car!”
In europe they say that if everyone was driving speed limit, it’d be a big saving on fossil fuel. Though I wonder how much.
August 29th, 2005 at 8:24 am
redtetrahedron says:
I’d like a car that can drive itself - especially on my long commute to work. It can be a good safety feature if it can be programmed to detect if the driver has nodded off (or is DUI) and takes over automatically.
BTW, I can squeeze another 25% of miles out of a tank of gas by driving under the speed limit - but people still drive like NASCAR. I don’t know how high the price of gas will have to go before people start slowing down.
August 29th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
08a4737eae46 says:
08a4737eae46…
08a4737eae46f71ecb65…
May 15th, 2008 at 8:24 am