http://abc7news.com/technology/google-to-test-self-driving-cars-in-mountain-view/725610/ Google to test self-driving cars in Mountain View By David Louie May 15, 2015
[video flash http://abc7news.com/technology/google-to-test-self-driving-cars-in-mountain-view/725610/#videoplayer Google will start testing a self-driving, custom-built electric car on the streets of Mountain View soon. / KGO ] MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (KGO) -- A new kind of Google self-driving car will be hitting the streets very soon. Google is switching from an SUV to a custom-built electric car that will probably turn heads and they will only be navigating the streets of Mountain View. It will be an attraction, or possibly a distraction, depending on what you think of the small, two-seater, electric, self-driving car. Google designed them this way so its engineers can study how people react to them and interact with them. A human will retain manual control as needed and its speed will be limited to 25 miles an hour. Joe Hong has driven by the Lexus self-driving vehicles that Google has tested for six years and speed is not a word he would associate with them. "They're typically in the fast lane, but going a little bit too slow, so they're already on the slow side in my experience," he said. Nurse Jamie Peterson has no fears about being struck by one. "I would trust it to stop. I would definitely trust it to stop," Peterson said. This next-phase of testing brings self-driving capability closer to reality for seniors who fear losing their independence and mobility. "For a lot of folks they're forced perhaps to give up the keys and that really limits and decreases their independence," Amy Andonian said. Ginger Johnson is 84 years old and still driving. "Sometimes we lose the ability or we have diminished ability to judge distances and speed, so i think it would be a terrific thing," Johnson said. Google has built 25 of these prototype cars. They will be put on the streets of Mountain View a few at a time. Monica Woodbury said she wouldn't walk in front of a crosswalk if she saw one of these cars coming, unless the self-driving car was completely stopped. That's the kind of behavior that Google will study as it moves forward with self-driving cars. [© 2015 ABC] http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/68620992/googles-selfdriving-car-graduates-to-public-streets Google's self-driving car graduates to public streets LiPo Ching/Los Angeles Times/TNS [images http://www.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/4/u/s/d/a/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.620x349.14usao.png/1431891298667.jpg A two-seater prototype of Google's self-driving car, right, slows down as a SUV crosses its path during a demonstration at Google in Mountain View, California. http://static.stuff.co.nz/files/Googlecar1.jpg Google's self-driving car slows for a cyclist during a demonstration of the two-seater prototype at Google in Mountain View, California. Photo: LiPo Ching/Los Angeles Times/TNS http://static.stuff.co.nz/files/Googlegraphic.jpg (poster) http://static.stuff.co.nz/files/Googlecar2.jpg The two-seater prototype of Google's self-driving car is ready for demonstration at Google in Mountain View, California. Photo: LiPo Ching/Los Angeles Times/TNS ] Even as Google plans to test its fleet of 100 pod-like self-driving cars on US roads, its business model remains a bit of a mystery. Actually building and selling cars might be among the least likely scenarios. Google and other technology companies now researching cars might be more interested in licensing software systems to automakers and collecting the trove of data involved in tracking drivers' movements, analysts say. Tech giants Google and Apple are circling the automotive industry because they foresee a giant transformation of transportation that will change how people operate cars and what they do inside them, said Oliver Hazimeh, a partner and automotive expert at PWC, the international accounting and consulting firm. "The tech companies want to know how to participate," he said. "Think about the office in the autonomous car. People can respond to emails, look at screens and do work." That creates opportunities to sell services and provide commerce. It will also generate massive amounts of data on where the cars go and what people are doing during that travel time, Hazimeh said. Silicon Valley wants a piece of that. There are already nascent approaches to this, he said. Insurance companies, for example, have programs that give reduce rates to drivers that allow their mileage and driving habits to be tracked electronically. The automobile industry should expect competition from tech companies and other new entrants. Uber, the ride-sharing company, is researching self-driving cars, possibly as a first step to establishing a robotic taxi service. Apple is reportedly researching electric car development, although it has not publicly released details on the project. Hazimeh said he wouldn't be surprised to one day see people summoning robotic cars from an Apple watch. By 2025, as many as 250,000 self-driving vehicles could be sold each year globally, and that number could swell to 11.8 million a decade later, according to a January study by IHS Automotive, an industry research firm. "Vehicles that can take anyone from A to B at the push of a button could transform mobility for millions of people," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, wrote on the company's website Friday. For now, Google has no plans to sell any of its bubbly fleet of self-drivers. They are strictly for research. But they will hit public roads over the next few months near Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Previous testing has taken place only on closed courses. The cars are built to operate without a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal. "Our software and sensors do all the work," Urmson said. "The vehicles will be very basic — we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible — but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button." The prototypes are the first of a 100-car fleet the tech giant is building. In the long run, Urmson sees a vision of safer roads — the overwhelming majority of auto mishaps are caused by human error — and fewer traffic jams. Robotic cars could also shuttle people who can't driver because of age or illness. Google has said previously self-driving cars could launch new business models in which people buy the use of vehicles they don't own. The company has already tested other types of self-driving cars on public streets, including modified Lexus sport-utility vehicles, under a special permit program by the California Department of Motor Vehicles that requires a human driver at the controls. The US state has issued six other companies permits to operate such cars, including Delphi, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Tesla, Bosch and Nissan. Google, with 23, has the most in operation. Tesla is approved for 12 vehicles. The remainder of the companies, which include both automakers and electronic systems suppliers, have just two or three cars each on the road, said Bernard Soriano, the DMV's deputy director of risk management. There are 277 approved test drivers. The DMV is writing regulations that would govern the operation of self-driving vehicles on state roads and may issue them later this year. "We need to do our due diligence and research to vet out all of the safety issues," Soriano said. "We are close, but we don't have a date to have them available yet." The vehicles that will be tested on open roads this summer will have removable steering wheels, accelerator pedals and brake pedals to allow "safety drivers" to take control if needed. Google says the cars are safe. The vehicles have sensors that "can detect objects out to a distance of more than two football fields in all directions, which is especially helpful on busy streets with lots of intersections," Urmson said. Speed will be limited to 40 kmh. The interior will be spartan — two seats with seat belts, a space for passengers' belongings, buttons to start and stop, and a screen that shows the route. "We're looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle," Urmson said. -Los Angeles Times/TNS [© 2015 Fairfax New Zealand] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-self-driving-accidents-20150512-story.html#page=2 Humans at fault in self-driving car crashes By Jerry Hirsch and Joseph Serna 5/12/2015 [images http://www.trbimg.com/img-555159c2/turbine/la-fi-self-driving-car-accidents-20150511-001/600/600x338 Of the nearly 50 self-driving cars rolling around California roads and highways, four have gotten into accidents since September. (Eric Risberg / Associated Press) http://www.trbimg.com/img-546e6326/turbine/la-fi-hy-1121-la-auto-show-future-of-driving-20141121/250/250x141 In a self-driving future, we may not even want to own cars video flash Company Shows Off New Self-Driving Big Rig Daimler Trucks North America this week unveiled its new autonomous big rig that allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road while the vehicle operates in a sort of autopilot mode. (May 6) AP ] -Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars undergoing tests on California roads since September have crashed -Driver inattention was behind the collisions involving the Google cars, said a spokeswoman for the tech giant -Google said its automated cars have driven nearly 1 million miles on autopilot The riskiest thing about self-driving vehicles may turn out to be human drivers. Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars undergoing tests on California roads since September, when the state began issuing permits to auto companies, have crashed. But the cars, three owned by Google and one by Delphi, were in collisions caused by human error. Driver inattention was behind the collisions involving the Google cars, said Katelin Jabbari, a spokeswoman for the tech giant, which is developing a fleet of autonomous vehicles. The crash of the Delphi car was in October while the vehicle waited to turn left at a light. Another car crossed a median and struck it, company officials said. Despite the mishaps, self-piloted vehicles hold the promise of improved safety, said Xavier Mosquet, who head's Boston Consulting Group's automotive practice in North America. "These cars are prototypes and experiments. You can't yet derive long-term conclusions," Mosquet said. But so-called active safety systems, which serve as the building blocks for automated driving, are already being built into cars and are making roads safer, he said. Some of the systems, such as sensors that alert drivers to a potential crash and slam on the brakes, are reducing injury and property insurance claims, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "If you can help the driver make the right decision, it is helpful," Mosquet said. "I think the improvement will be real." It's a mistake to draw conclusions about self-driving vehicles from the recent crashes, said Bryant Walker Smith, who is both a law and engineering professor at the University of South Carolina. "I am not surprised that autonomous vehicles were hit," Smith said. "Any vehicle out on the road long enough will be in a crash." Google said its automated cars have driven nearly 1 million miles on autopilot and are now averaging around 10,000 self-driven miles a week mostly on city streets. The cars have traveled another 700,000 miles with humans at the helm. "Over the 6 years since we started the project, we've been involved in 11 minor accidents during those 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel, and not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident," Google said in its blog Monday. Smith said it all sounds routine, given the state of human driving. "These were not catastrophic, high-profile crashes that would be of particular alarm, for example when that vehicle does something that human would not do such as speeding up and not stopping," Smith said. With humans now at the wheel, more that 30,000 people die annually in auto collisions in the U.S. "That's a staggering number," Smith said. "People will accept an unacceptable status quo and be concerned about the things that are new." Google and Delphi are two of seven companies in the state that have obtained permits for self-driving cars. There are 48 vehicles approved for testing and 269 people permitted to drive them, said Jessica Gonzalez, a spokeswoman with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Still, the involvement of autonomous vehicles in collisions, and the lack of public reporting of the incidents, raises red flags, consumer groups said. "It is important that the public know what happened," John M. Simpson, the Privacy Project Director for Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, wrote in a letter to Google. "You are testing driverless vehicles on public highways, quite possibly putting other drivers at risk." Consumer Watchdog wants Google to release current and future collision reports involving its driverless cars, he said. Consumer Watchdog learned of the Google's robotic cars crashes after it filed a Public Records Act request with the DMV. The DMV told Consumer Watchdog that self-driving vehicle accident reports are confidential and declined to release them. However, the Associated Press reported details about the four crashes Monday. Rosemary Shahan, president Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety in Sacramento, also expressed concern about driverless cars. But she said news of four incidents didn't mean much. "It is a little early to conclude anything based on such tiny numbers," Shahan said, adding that the technology still face challenges, She noted that even the developers of autonomous cars have said they aren't yet ready for driving in inclement weather conditions, including snow, fog and heavy rain — situations California drivers confront. Moreover, the idea that a passenger can suddenly take control of the vehicle if needed is questionable, Shahan said. "You can't make an emergency maneuver if you are watching stock quotes or a ball game." Regardless of these issues, traffic safety officials and automakers see self-driving cars as the future. By 2025, as many as 250,000 self-driving vehicles could be sold each year globally, and that number could swell to 11.8 million a decade later, according to a January study by IHS Automotive, an industry research firm. "It is no longer question of if — but when — autonomous vehicles will hit the road," Mosquet said. Already vehicles with varying levels of self-driving capability — including single-lane highway driving, valet parking and maneuvering in traffic jams — are starting to reach dealer showrooms this year and next, he said. Tesla Motors plans to update the software on many of its cars to enable the luxury electric sedans to steer, brake and even find parking places all by themselves. One new model planned for Cadillac will have a "Super Cruise" mode that will allow drivers to switch the vehicle into a semi-automated mode in which it will automatically keep the car in its lane, making necessary steering adjustments, and autonomously trigger braking and speed control to maintain a safe distance from other vehicles. Unless prohibited, these functions, and maybe even full self-driving vehicles, are legal in much of the country, Smith said. For now, just four states — California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada, as well as Washington D.C. —regulate the research development testing of automated vehicles, Smith said. But Smith said the legal presumption is that unless something has been specifically prohibited by law, it is permitted. Ironically, he said, that means that Michigan, one of the states that has passed regulations for self-driving vehicles — is actually more restrictive than states that have not considered the issue. [© 2015, Los Angeles Times] ... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-self-driving-big-rig-20150506-story.html Daimler's self-driving big rig debuts on Hoover Dam ... http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-carnegie-mellon-robotics-20150202-story.html Uber opens robotics center, fueling speculation on self-driving cars http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/driverless-cars-good-news-for-whom/16163 Driverless cars: good news for whom? Operators of delivery fleets would like nothing better than to turn their personnel headaches into autonomous-vehicle maintenance accounts. Karl D. Stephan | May 15 2015 [ http://mediaassets.knoxnews.com/photo/2015/03/27/truck1_15698023_ver1.0_640_480.jpg Mercedes-Benz / Knox News ] After some cautious toe-dipping by Google in a well-publicized series of experiments on public roads in California and Nevada, other more serious players are now eyeing the waters of driverless cars. According to a recent New York Times report, automakers including General Motors, Volvo, Infiniti, Mercedes-Benz, and Tesla have either already fielded limited-capability "lane-keeping" features in their high-end models, or plan to unveil more advanced systems soon that will allow complete hands-off driving under a wide variety of conditions. Absent a flood of new restrictive legislation, which hasn't happened so far, it is fairly safe to say that the autonomous vehicle is just a few blocks down the road and heading this way. Is this a good thing, and if so, for whom? Danny Crichton, a Ph. D. student in the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, thinks it is. Writing in a recent issue of National Review, he waxes rhapsodical over the benefits of automation past and future, and has this to say about driverless cars: "Perhaps no technology has more potential to improve our quality of life than the autonomous car. We will be able to relax during our commutes, reducing our stress and improving our health. Autonomous cars could almost instantaneously deliver a greater number of goods and services, such as meals, household supplies, and home-maintenance services, giving us more leisure time." Crichton clearly writes from a perspective in which driving is just one more daily chore we have to put up with on our way to our real job of teaching or administrating or studying for our Ph. D. from Harvard. Rather oddly for a person who researches labor economics, he never once mentions an occupation by which about one out of every forty employed persons (2.4%) in the U. S make their living: professional truckdriving. If you are a sober, responsible family man (or woman) who couldn't cut the grade in college but want to make a decent living by working hard, truckdriving is one of the more attractive jobs. Especially with the recent oil boom fueled by fracking technology, truckdrivers have been in great demand. For a while there were billboards on I-35 in Central Texas advertising large signing bonuses for truckdrivers willing to go to work in the oil fields. While the hours are long, the work stressful and sometimes dangerous, and time at home is limited, millions of truckdrivers earn enough to support a family. Many of them are members of minority groups, and quite a few own their trucks, making them entrepreneurs. Almost every dump truck I see servicing a construction site around Central Texas has a sign on it with the Hispanic surname of the owner-operator. I don't know when, or if, trucking companies will go to autonomous driving systems. Because of their specialized skills and responsibilities, long-distance and heavy-equipment truckdrivers may be the last cadre of humans to yield the driver's seat to a robot, long after all passenger cars have turned into mobile Internet lounges. But operators of delivery fleets would like nothing better than to turn their personnel headaches into autonomous-vehicle maintenance accounts. There remains the question of who or what picks up the package from the back of the UPS truck and carries it to your door, but quadcopters are waiting in the wings for that. I'm not sure how a quadcopter will ring a doorbell, but by then maybe we'll have wireless doorbells. Local delivery service is one of the applications that Mr. Crichton explicitly envisions as being done by autonomous vehicles. Human beings have an obscure but persistent longing for permanence. If we find a good thing, we want it to go on indefinitely, and that goes for jobs as well as other things. But it's generally a bad thing to use legislation or union muscle to artificially preserve specific categories of jobs in the face of technological changes. This kind of thing carried to an extreme produces the antique-car museum that is Cuba, and stifles the increasing technology-fueled productivity that Crichton praises in his article. If increased productivity means we can do more with less, the economy as a whole benefits, but some people stand more of a chance to benefit than others. Today's truckdriver in an earlier time might have been my grandfather's iceman, who routinely lugged 300-pound blocks of ice around in a horse-drawn wagon and hauled chunks of it into kitchen iceboxes. The electric refrigerator eliminated those jobs by the 1950s, but at the same time the trucking industry grew and eventually supplanted rail as a dominant form of goods transport. And it takes a lot more truckers than it does railroad workers to deliver the same amount of stuff. So far, autonomous-driving technology is expanding into what the New York Times terms a regulatory vacuum. A few states have passed laws either licensing or restricting such cars, but in most states it is still neither prohibited nor explicitly allowed. Eventually, a driverless car will be involved in a fatal accident. We may or may not hear about it, depending on the skill of the automaker's PR people. But whenever such an accident becomes public knowledge, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will then receive its legal warrant to examine the whole issue of autonomous vehicles. The outcome of its study will be critical to the question of whether the technology will continue to be deployed smoothly and cautiously, or whether labor groups such as truckdrivers who feel threatened by it will seize on the incident to mount a crippling regulatory attack that will stop the technology in its tracks. If that happens, the nation as a whole may end up the loser. The growth of a new technology is a fascinating thing, bound up in both technical and social issues that can hinge on small but critical events. The next few years will show whether driverless cars make it big and relieve most of us from what is often a burden—and whether they relieve thousands or millions of professional drivers of their jobs. Sources: Danny Crichton's article, "Fear Not the Robot," appeared in the May 4, 2015 edition of National Review, pp. 34-35. The May 2, 2015 online edition of the New York Times carried the article "Hands-Free Cars Take Wheel, and Law Isn't Stopping Them," by Aaron M. Kessler, at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/business/hands-free-cars-take-wheel-and-law-isnt-stopping-them.html. The statistic about the number of professional truckdrivers in the U. S. was from the website http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/. And my grandfather really did run an ice plant for a number of years in the 1930s. [© New Media Foundation 2015] http://uncovercalifornia.com/content/24522-google-s-self-driving-cars-maximum-risk-human-drivers Google’s Self-Driving Cars at Maximum Risk from Human Drivers by Jonathan Clifford 05/13/2015 ... http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/things-accidents-involving-driving-cars-31003148 Things to Know About Accidents Involving Self-Driving Cars LOS ANGELES — May 11, 2015 By JUSTIN PRITCHARD ... http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Consumer-group-Self-driving-cars-need-steering-6259001.php Consumer group says self-driving cars need steering wheels, too By David R. Baker May 12, 2015 ... http://mainenewsonline.com/content/15054005-human-drivers-pose-increasing-risk-google-s-self-driving-cars Human drivers pose increasing risk to Google’s self-driving cars by Herb Ryder on 13 May 2015 [image http://mainenewsonline.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/article/Google-Self-Driving-Car-Maximum-Risk.jpg (self-driving car) ] ... http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow/ci_28130991/roadshow-what-would-google-car-say-about-bad Roadshow: What they did to my charging car — prank or crime? By Gary Richards [May 18, 2015] ... http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/546168/watch-googles-driverless-car.html Watch: Google's driverless car (v) CNN | May 18, 2015 ... http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber-self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached Uber gutted Carnegie Mellon’s top robotics lab to build self-driving cars A 'partnership' based on poaching By Josh Lowensohn on May 19, 2015 For EVLN posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Google-to-test-self-driving-EVs-in-Mt-View-CA-tp4675676.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
