Google Introduces Hands-Free Driving
It doesn’t take an eye tracking device to tell us that texting while driving is not a good idea. We’ve seen quite a number of eye tracking studies that have shown people’s tendency for distracted driving in modern day life. Whether it’s talking or texting, driver safety is an issue we are hearing more about as new laws are passed banning phones and personal electronic devices on roads. In 2008, more than 27,000 people died in car accidents in the United States alone, and hands-free devices have become the standard as a result of growing accidents due to distracted driving.
Well, Google has now announced that they’re experimenting with hands-free driving. In an article in the New York Times, Google is featured prominently for testing a new group of cars that use artificial intelligence to mimic decisions and habits made by a human driver. To date they have tested 7 Toyota Priuses driving 1000 miles without human intervention and over 140,000 miles with only occasional human override control. The only accident that occurred in all those miles happened with one of the Google cars was rear-ended at a stoplight.
The cars were designed by Google engineer and the director of Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Sebastian Thrun, the co-inventor of Google’s street view mapping program.
The team from Stanford was awarded a $2 million prize from the Pentagon after they created a car that drove over 132 miles autonomously in the desert five years ago. We often write about sleepy and distracted drivers here at the blog, and engineers are excited for this new product as it boasts a faster reaction time than humans and 360 degree perception. These cars don’t get distracted. They don’t get sleepy. They don’t get intoxicated.
The team is still testing the cars and may run into some legal problems. Most driving laws are written with the idea that a human must be in control of the vehicle at all times. But what happens when technology begins to surpass the law? This presents some interesting questions as to liability and who’s responsible in case of a crash. The same questions might be relevant for eye tracking and other forthcoming control-based technology. In the case of a crash, is the driver liable? Or is it the software maker who designed the system in the first place?
Either way, there is bound to be some interesting interpretation of prior laws.
Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
Related articles:
- Driving Blind? Eye Tracking Study Shows Cell Phones Cause Inattention Blindness
- Texting While Driving Apps: Helpful or Harmful?
- Biometric Devices: Can An Electronic Driving Coach Make Safer Roads?
- Sleepy Driving and the Eye Tracking Fix
- Motion Tracking Creates Hands Free Cell Phone Control