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The tech company's self-driving cars will be tested on public roads this summer - but they will have steering wheels and pedals. Report by Leggc.

Visit: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qbmn5_google-self-drive-cars-get-green-light_news

This can't come soon enough.

Drivers are the reason for most all accidents - mechanical failure being only 13%.   Take the driver out of the equation and you have much safer roads, and along with much less traffic congestion and faster speed limits (computers have almost instant reaction times compared to humans).

The hard part will be forcing the die-hards to give it up - but by that time they will be the exception and hopefully classed as a danger to public safety.

+1

Im really excited about this as someone who has never bothered to learn to drive.... i own a car but hate travelling in the stupid dangerous thing tbh.

The die hards might get a better deal when the race track industry booms and they can go for drives near by at low cost and faster then before. 

Put me down for the pre order of 1 self drive car though :)

As long as they gotta pay a driver to "supervise"

Exactly. I think if we were all talking about events from personal experience with crazy drivers there would be no end. I also think that fines should be much higher for the purpose of safety.
As far as I know, these cars were only in a few accidents over the years (around 10) and none were caused by the car itself or some error. This is quite amazing.
I'm looking forward to this. It would make travelling so much easier!

This is needed. You obviously don't realize that without supervision they would be letting a 1000(+)kg (just throwing numbers) machine that isn't ready for release roam the streets. The project and software itself needs time to mature.

I was waiting for these self driven cars for years. Hope that this succeeds and the accident rates go down but there needs to be some kind of monitoring done before many start owning these cars. Wonder what's going to be the price of these cars  :-\

There is no reason they should cost any more than a regular car.  The price will go down as they become more common.

Add:  cheap electronics
Remove:  Steering wheel, gas and brake pedals

Since most people will simply call one when they need it, and not own one outright, there won't be much use for all the vanity features on most cars today. 

I wonder when they will fully come out to the public and we can buy them at the dealership.

This cars will not survive for a month in my country. There lots of crazy drivers and the software cannot predict this drivers.

This is cool. The self driving cars have been driving the streets of Mountain View, CA (where Google is located) for at least a year. I mean they had to test them somewhere, but they have been on public streets for a long time. I guess now other communities may start seeing these cars.

I don't think the use of a self driving car is incredible meaningful but the technology to control machines, to give them spatial awareness, is a very, very big deal. I'd' be surprise if the cars are ever actually available for personal use or retail sales. Google's not going to be a car dealership...

Sign me up,   I'm sure I will be nearly the last person to get one as I imagine they will be out of my price range for a long while.

These cars are better than average if not most drivers. Besides, if those drivers cause the accident they will get fined.
Regular drivers can't predict anything better than software, else we would have less accidents.

Trying to compete with the big UBER now, And UBER is still a private company :)

Maybe google can use these for their cars http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml

If you've seen I, Robot I hope the cars are like that.

maybe less accidents.  maybe more robots though.   ::)

Who is going to buy them if they are limited to 25mph?

Would they have to be automatic transmissions? I cannot stand auto boxes.

I wonder how this car will score at NCAP  ???
Anyway I always like hearing auto car news I guess next stop is to make it fly  ;D

Not sure If a self-driving car will be better than an human driver at negotiating with not too clear, confusing, or vandalized traffic signs.

This will depend on the exact situation. I've left the third picture for a reason. I (a person) do not know that language, neither does that car. I'm pretty sure that we both wouldn't do what we're supposed to at such a sign.
This is why the system has to mature as I've recently said. While time goes there will be better sensors and object recognition, so while waiting there are going to be additional benefits.

Yeah but lets see what happens with the gov because it might end up in a law change eventually from manual to self drive, you may have no choice.

The car could possibly use GPS, but even GPS could be a stretch in a self-driving car if there are different traffic signs indicated for a certain place. Steering could be made with voice recognition, ordering the car to turn left or right depending on the road. I don't know how exactly would this self-driving car turn out, but I know one thing for certain: don't market it in my country because drivers here are so unpredictable and aggressive in driving.

Actually the car will probably respond to them more quickly than a person would. That's their charm.
I don't see their benefit while travelling around the city and such as it is no necessary. Although when travelling on highways for more than a thousand kilometers they would be very useful.
Like I said, once this matures it will be a thing. A person driving a car will be optional someday.