Google’s Self Driving Car

Is Google trying to take over the world?  With the recent news that they are testing “driver less” cars, they may well succeed.  It seems they have been programming some cars to be able to “self drive,” as a means for more safety, possibly fewer cars on the road, and just to be able to say to the world that they could and did do this.

As current technology and laws stand, there does have to be a licensed driver actually in the car but the driving program is actually doing the driving.  In the early tests, there has only been one reported accident that happened when the Google car was re-ended by another vehicle.

But think of the almost endless possibilities.  People can go to the party, drink all the alcohol they want and make it home without having to worry about getting stopped for driving under the influence.  They won’t have to worry about little things like crashing into the garage door by forgetting to open it before starting to drive or trying to enter it too soon when they get home.  Of course, a down side to this is the garage door repairmen will no longer be collecting the tales of how the garage door was really damaged.  And the insurance companies will lose some of their advertising tales for the same reason.  But the Google cars will be able to have the automatic garage door opener programmed in so that the car can’t start out of the garage or attempt to enter until the garage door is opened correctly.

Self driving cars may make it possible at some point in the future to send the car to the school to pick up the children at school and deliver them to soccer practice or piano practice while the parents go on with their everyday work.  Google cars programmed to follow a route on Google maps to go to the school, then to the soccer practice field then to the music teacher’s home.  Depending on which child would finish the after school activity first, the car can be set to wait or return to the other then come back.  Why, the Google car could even be set to allow some customization that would allow the parents to set a “bickering trigger” that would tell the children to stop their bickering after “hearing” some pre-determined level of back seat whines with the appropriate parent voice.