It’s Drive Time for Google

Take heed if you live in Northern California, as Internet giant Google is taking its fleet of advanced egg-shaped self-driving cars from the test track to “familiar roads” near its headquarters in Mountain View this summer to test their meddle in real-world situations. Erring on the side of caution, the cars will be speed-limited to a maximum 25 mph, and there will be a “safety driver” onboard at all times who can take over vehicle operation if necessary. “When we started designing the world’s first fully self-driving vehicle our goal was a vehicle that could shoulder the entire burden of driving,” says the director of Google’s self-driving car project Chris Urmson. “Vehicles that can take anyone from A to B at the push of a button could transform mobility for millions of people, reducing the 94 percent of accidents cause by human error [and] reclaiming the billions of hours wasted in traffic.”