Google chair calls for automated vehicle adoption

Posted on 13 Jul 2012 at 13:05, by Gareth Halfacree

Google's Eric Schmidt, executive chair at the advertising firm, has indicated that he believes self-driving cars - as his company is developing - should become the predominant form of transportation for the majority of the populace.

Currently under public road testing in the US, Google's self-driving car project is an extension of its Google Maps and Google Navigation service. Equipped with sensors, scanners and GPS, the vehicles are able to find their own ways from A to B without driver intervention - and, despite thousands of hours of testing, have yet to be involved in a collision while under computer control.

Speaking at the Google annual press talk, as reported by TechCrunch, Schmidt espoused the benefits of automated transportation and all-but declared the manually-operated motor vehicle dead - just as soon as his company can work out the final few bugs in the system, that is.

Asked what problems faced the development of automated transportation, Schmidt joked that "the current biggest problem is that it runs at the speed limit and nobody drives at the speed limit", before admitting that the designs were not production-ready. Despite this, Schmidt claims to have received interest from major vehicle manufacturers.

Asked how likely it was for drivers to voluntarily give up control of their vehicles, Schmidt reminded the audience that 35,000 people are killed in drink-driving incidents in the US alone each year. "It's a terrible tragedy. The sooner we can get cars to drive for us the more lives we can [...] self-driving cars should become the predominant mode of transportation in our lifetime."

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User comments

Eric Schmdit

Eric Schmidt mentioned here had lost his credibility when he got invovled into fascism crimes which had endangered human lives
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There is actually a war between fascism and anti-fascism, at this stage, fascism still prevails in our lives, Eric Schmidt, Sebastian Thrun and Gabriele Scheler are just front figures we could see in this fascism circle, there is a whole pack of fascists behind them
Eric, as we can see, starting from Gabriele Scheler's atrocity case on Stanford campus back in 2004, many people, including Gabriele Scheler, Sebastian Thrun, you Eric Schmidt, and also your collegue in China Kaifu Lee, had made contributions to such fascism crimes which had cost human life of Stanford student May Zhou and crimes which had retaliated on victims and almost cost life of the victim as I am
... ... and someone who had provided legal coverage for your fascism crimes, including a powerful officer from Santa Clara DA Office, namely ZZZ (and after ZZZ, YYY), and who had further collateralled with your side(suspect side) to conspire and curse victims( Stanford, May Zhou, me) in every possible way since 2006 till today; and maybe include the officer who insist on May Zhou's death as a suicide or accident, even though I had clearly pointed out who's involved in May Zhou's murder case ...
... ... and someone who could provide political support for your fascism crimes, including top politician from the country of Germany whom we all know, and maybe include a retired top politician from UK as well, etc. and more and more to find out later ...
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I believe, though some names missed out, all names mentioned in the above comment are part of this fascism circle

By PeterCao on 13 Jul 2012