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Comment by KoZeN | Hacker News Reader

I believe Google are potentially missing a trick. If they are developing an automated car that requires little to no human interference then surely the design would be completely different if all cars on the road were automated.

The biggest hurdle appears to be human error. 'What about drunk drivers who drive on to your side of the road etc'. My question is, what if all cars are automated? Zero drunk drivers, minimal risk of encountering unpredictable driving behaviour, much easier and safer to implement.

It will get to a point, during our lifetime, where humans controlling a car are limited to private race tracks. Speeding, drink drivers, poor driving ability, insurance premiums, all of these will push automation to the forefront in no time at all.

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In what sense are Google "missing a trick" here? Before there's any prospect of getting all cars automated, car automation has to be good enough that that's a credible suggestion.

Google has (presumably) good lobbyists and plenty of money, but persuading legislators to require all motor vehicles to be automated before demonstrating safe automated motor vehicles would be a mighty tall order.

car automation has to be good enough that that's a credible suggestion.

I completely agree. I suppose what I was trying to get at is that the direction Google seem to be taking this is one where it will end up as an amazing feature on top end luxury cars whereas the technology could be very different if evey car on the road had the same technology and each was constantly aware of every other vehicle in its proximity thus reducing the risk of human drivers interfering with a predetermined path.

The latter sounds like it would require additional or even very different technology to implement.

That's my two cents, keep in mind I know more about the internal combustion engine than I do about programmed automated technology!

The transition will likely take dozens of years so the first automated cars will have to be able to handle human error.

I doubt it will take that long.

30 years ago the vast majority of cars didn't have airbags, ABS or even ECU's and technology develops exponentially faster now than it did in the 80's so in my opinion we will see the first mass production fully automated road legal vehicle within 10 years.

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