Self-driving cars now legal in California

[DaveM]

Just think one day when the kids of today get old they will be telling their kids "I still remember when you actually had to drive the car yourself"

(CNN) -- California is the latest state to allow testing of Google's self-driving cars on the roads, though only with a human passenger along as a safety measure.
Gov. Edmund "Jerry" Brown signed the autonomous-vehicles bill into law Tuesday afternoon alongside Google co-founder Sergey Brin and State Sen. Alex Padilla, who authored the bill, at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The bill, SB 1298, will set up procedures and requirements for determining when the cars are road-ready.
Brin hopes that self-driving cars will be able to drive on public streets in five years or less.
You won't need a driver's license by 2040
"Anybody who first gets in the car and finds the car is driving will be a little skittish. But they'll get over it," said Brown when asked if the California Highway Patrol was on board with the plan.

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[Rocky]

The stuff of science fiction movies

 

[CarlS]

So far, the cars have have racked up more than 300,000 driving miles, and 50,000 of those miles were without any intervention from the human drivers, Google says.

Now that is a positive spin it I have heard of one. What it really says is that the cars were only driven 50,000 miles out of 300,000 with out human intervention. Only 16.7% of the time did the cars drive on their own without human intervention.

 

[Rocky]

It's a sign of the future.
Modern airliners, once airborne, fly by themselves and pilots even nap in the cockpit.
Maybe I'm a control freak, but I like to have my hands on the wheel and bars.

 

[CarlS]

It's a sign of the future.
Modern airliners, once airborne, fly by themselves and pilots even nap in the cockpit.
Maybe I'm a control freak, but I like to have my hands on the wheel and bars.

+1 on both counts!

 

[DaveM]

Well next thing the self-driving motorbike

 

[Rocky]

Well next thing the self-driving motorbike

Yeah, that's just what we need
I can't wait for that to happen.

 

[CarlS]

I want to see how the motorcycle keeps it's balance at a traffic light.

 

[DaveM]

Those little training wheels will click out at low speeds I suppose

 

[CarlS]

If I had that set up, I could sleep all the way to North Carolina while the motorcycle rides itself.

 

[DaveM]

With my luck I would fall off it while sleeping

 

[CarlS]

You need a seat belt!

 

[DaveM]

Lol that you would need