California Legalizes Self-Driving Cars

[NanuqoftheNorth]

California Gov. Jerry Brown, California State Sen. Alex Padilla, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin exit a self-driving car at the Google headquarters in Mountain View on Sept. 25

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed a bill legalizing autonomous vehicles on the state’s roadways. The allows Google to test out its self-driving car in the state immediately, provided there’s a licensed driver in the driver’s seat to take over if needed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (In fact, Google was already testing its cars in the state, on the assumption that it was legal as long as there was no law specifically prohibiting it. But now it’s definitely legal.) And it paves the way for manufacturers to begin selling autonomous cars to consumers by January 2015.

The Chronicle notes, however, that the bill leaves a lot of unanswered questions for the Department of Motor Vehicles to sort out. I’ve posed a few in past blog posts: What happens when the cops pull over a self-driving car? And are autonomous vehicles really going to obey the speed limit? Because that would be annoying. The Chronicle has more:

… Who's responsible if a driverless car causes an accident while in autonomous mode, the manufacturer or the person in the car at the time? How should insurance policies be crafted? How safe is safe enough? How should these vehicles be evaluated against that goal? And how do you create regulations for technology that's still under development?http://www.slate.com...ons_to_dmv.html

[Guest Bwood]

Yeah I just saw this on my local news.

I'm sure they drive better than all the Asians...

[jasonluckydog]

so if I get drunk my car can drive me home pretty cool..

all I need now is to take up drinking and buy a Googler.

[Cyberjag]

Surgically attached smartphones are next...

[RedMage138]

Surgically attached smartphones are next...

[NanuqoftheNorth]

It won't be long after these become available that they will be given their own lanes on freeways, allowing these fully automated vehicles to demonstrate their inherent superiority to conventional cars. This will come in part due to the lobbying efforts of manufacturers to ensure the demise of conventional cars and spur purchases of their latest products.

If you actually own a fully automated vehicle your insurance rates will be a fraction of what rates are for conventional cars. Eventually insurance rates for manually driven vehicles will become prohibitive for all but the richest individuals. Ultimately, few if any vehicles will be allowed to be manually driven on the public streets and highways.

Most people will eventually stop buying automobiles. A service industry will develop similar to taxicabs but without the driver.

Instead of millions of cars sitting idle in garages or parking lots all day they will be transporting other clients while you are at work or home. A lot of new land will become available for development once traditional parking lots fail to generate sufficient revenue.

In the future manually driving a car will be similar to riding a horse. There will be places to go for the small minority that still want to drive. Those places will likely be out in the country where we can "stable" our cars and continue the expensive novelty of driving ourselves.

Emergency vehicles, dump trucks, buses, trains and planes will all be fully automated around the same timeline.

[nobody]

uh huh great. so they are gunna let drones fly our us even thought the hacking community has come forward and shown that they can be hack. In response the government has said we will make cars do it 2.

Ill keep buying classics thank you - the kind they cant auto shut down.

Plus this will get rid of the car chase. They will just have the car drive you to the jail.

[NanuqoftheNorth]

Plus this will get rid of the car chase. They will just have the car drive you to the jail.

I could definately see where a wanted individual would be forced to walk everywhere.

The first time they entered a fully automated vehicle it might ID them and they would be directly transported to the hoosegow. No passing Go, no collecting two hundred dollars.

On the up side people would likely no longer have to worry about DWI or speeding tickets.

[nobody]

I could definately see where a wanted individual would be forced to walk everywhere.

The first time they entered a fully automated vehicle it might ID them and they would be directly transported to the hoosegow. No passing Go, no collecting two hundred dollars.

On the up side people would likely no longer have to worry about DWI or speeding tickets.

So you are saying the cops and the lawyers and the traffic courts will just go away? They will just start ticking different things like having gone 6 minutes without a sync update or using old software.

They wont get rid of the easy money.

[nobody]

For the record I love car chases. If they go away ill have to watch girl fights on youtube. NOt the good ones .....

[davos]

look! no hands

[NanuqoftheNorth]

So you are saying the cops and the lawyers and the traffic courts will just go away? They will just start ticking different things like having gone 6 minutes without a sync update or using old software.

They wont get rid of the easy money.

Ambulance chasers and municipal courts/police depts will certainly try and morph into something else in an attempt to preserve their livelyhoods, that is a given.

So will hospitals / emergency rooms, insurance companies, autobody shops and car dealerships, just for starters.

[NanuqoftheNorth]

http://jalopnik.com/...robot-youll-own

Driverless cars will be the first robot you ever own.

Lets get this started by really thinking about what it will mean to have an autonomous self-driving car. For the sake of our thought-experiments, let's assume it's, oh, 2025, when most companies seem to agree we'll definately have self-driving cars being sold regularly. If it helps, you can also imagine you're wearing a silver jumpsuit and eating pizzas-in-pills, too.

And here's something else exciting to consider: autonomous cars will likely be the first actual, genuine robot people will own. I mean beyond the little electronic trilobites that half-assedly vacuum some of our homes. A real robot, a computer that process the real world and affects it physically back. We're calling them "cars" but make no mistake: those Google Prii are robots, zipping up and down Lombard street.

And, while we're wondering, what about sending a pet to the vet in a driverless car? Or a kid to school? Can your car run errands for you while you're at work? Will new types of commercial spaces develop with fully automated drive-through systems? Should autonomous cars be designed with a standard for automated cargo loading and unloading? Could you send you car to get you lunch, and have it pay with your credit card data stored on it, transmitted wirelessly? The more you think about it, the more it becomes clear that moving people from place to place is only one part of what driverless cars can do.

http://jalopnik.com/...robot-youll-own

[NanuqoftheNorth]

Here is a comment that takes it to the next level...

Robot cars? Yup. they're our first step. I'd hope we make choices - however difficult - that integrate our consciousness into robot systems today. stripped of fear, hate, reluctance. Able to grow far beyond.

For cars, that means so so so much more than "driving." Total sensory immersion into a new environment. Sure, at first it will be like a hokey "v-world" interaction that's really still synthetic. But that's just the beginning. Say I could upload my consciousness from body to body - including robot bodies like cars. If my real body dies, that which you are stuck in is now you. Being John Malkovich with car chases and door dings

.

If the system is reasonably robust however, and sustainable on whatever planet it operates ideally then that could be a pretty cool way to actually "live."

Our lives are defined by a meatspace body, yet our brains create far beyond it. Robot cars now, anything you can imagine later.

Comment by Jon Zeke

Jalopnik.com "The First Robot You'll Own"

http://jalopnik.com/...robot-youll-own