Apparently Google is making a self driving car. I thought that was really cool and because I want to be an engineer I have thought about that idea before. I want to become most likely a mechanical engineer so I would enjoy doing stuff such as working on a self driving car. In my life I have pondered on ways to make cars or transportation better and I always liked the idea of having a car run itself or be run by a system of some sort. It makes me think there would be less accidents and the transportation could be faster. What I found even more amazing was that they have been testing it for some time and haven't run into too many flaws. I would think that they would encounter many flaws in this such as getting the car to follow your directions. I could be wrong but that leads me to believe the technology for this project it practically already here and it won’t be long before they have self driving cars. I really hope we end up with self-driving cars because that would make life so much easier and most likely save lives. I did some research into this and found out quite a few things. Google has been testing these cars for a while now and that they have encountered very few problems. The cars, even though they are being driven by a computer, still have a driver behind the wheel to correct any mistakes the computer makes. There are seven test cars and so far the drivers had only had to resume control of their cars in a handful of occasions. And what’s more is in those occasions the car most likely would have corrected itself or not make a mistake in the first place but the drivers resumed control just to make sure nothing went wrong. One car was in an accident but that was only because someone rear ended them at a stoplight. I think one of the coolest parts is that they can program each car to have a different personality such as an aggressive car which would be more likely to pass people vs. a passive car which would be more likely to let people pass them. The cars, they say, are safer than actually having a human driver because they are so precise and calculated. They also have a 360 degree view (the cars have a camera on top of them) and a computer never gets tired, stressed, or exhausted and is never under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The fact that the cars are safer means that once they have a reliable computer in the car (one that can’t be hacked or get a virus) and these cars are mass produced, they can program them to drive closer together which will make for a quicker transport. Also these cars’ being safer inherently makes it so lives will be saved and accidents will be avoided. Since they will not crash as often the cars could be make lighter, sacrificing crash safety, but makes the car require less gas or energy meaning the countries energy use would drop significantly. The cars are said to be currently over 8 years from being able to go into mass production but the fact that we are even that close surprises me. I hope by the time these cars can be used by the public the laws will have changed to accommodate self driving cars because currently there are some legal issues with the cars. First off all cars must be controlled by people at all times so these cars might not be legal. Also whose fault is it if the car crashes, the driver, who didn’t correct it, or the software maker, who let it happen in the first place. There are a lot of kinks to work out before these cars can work but maybe when I’m older I will get to let a car drive me somewhere and not have to worry about controlling it. I found some good sites that talk about it and if you would like to check it out here they are: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
