Friday, July 31, 2015

Google Cars in the Wild - Someone's Impressions

Read about Google Cars in California...

Int4resting how "polite" the GoogleCar seems to be... the author comments (regarding his motorcycle riding):

Once, I got a little caught out as the traffic transitioned from slow moving back to normal speed. I was in a lane between a Google car and some random truck and, partially out of experiment and partially out of impatience, I gunned it and cut off the Google car sort of harder than maybe I needed too... The car handled it perfectly (maybe too perfectly). It slowed down and let me in. However, it left a fairly significant gap between me and it. If I had been behind it, I probably would have found this gap excessive and the lengthy slowdown annoying. Honestly, I don't think it will take long for other drivers to realize that self-driving cars are "easy targets" in traffic.

Seems like California, home of the American big car culture of the 10950s, the suburban / commute phenomenon and other automobile trends, is a perfect petri dish for autonomous vehicles.