Google’s prototype electric self-driving car seats two, has no steering wheel | Ars Technica

The prototype Google revealed differs from the Priuses and Lexuses in that they can’t let humans take over the job of piloting; they are completely controlled by the onboard computer. In addition to lacking a steering wheel, the Google-built car also has no accelerator, no brake, no mirrors, no glove compartment, and no soundsystem your tiny smartphone speaker will have to do. The cars are capped at a modest 25mph and are started and stopped by a button.

via Google’s prototype electric self-driving car seats two, has no steering wheel | Ars Technica.

Wheeeeee!

(HT Jason)

How Disney Imagined the American Highway of the Future, 50 Years Ago – Jenny Xie – The Atlantic Cities

This vintage clip, part of the "Magic Highway, U.S.A." episode of the1950s TV series Disneyland, predicts how transportation — particular anything related to the highway — will evolve in America.

via How Disney Imagined the American Highway of the Future, 50 Years Ago – Jenny Xie – The Atlantic Cities.

This is amazing!

Will a World of Driverless Cars Be Heaven or Hell? – Robin Chase – The Atlantic Cities

Autonomous cars will be part of our reality faster than most people realize. While manufacturers have a four-phase plan to bring about the fully autonomous car within the next two decades, Google promises to have them ready as early as 2017, just three years distant.

My guess is that Google’s could be the "heaven" vision. In July they spent $966 million to purchase Waze, a company with a brilliant smart phone navigation app. The app delivers the best routes based on the historical choices of the 50 million Wazers combined with the traffic speeds they are experiencing in real-time. Back in the day, when I was CEO of Zipcar, I was struck that we knew the precise times, days, durations, and distances of car travel more intimately even than car manufacturers did. Today, Waze offers a greater insight into the exact travel paths of what must be on the order of a billion trips over many years. If you wanted to get into the on-demand public transport world, you couldn’t ask for better data against which to understand and predict exactly where and when people will want to travel. Couple that with Google Ventures single largest investment to date — $258 million — into Uber, which has perfected the request, pickup, and delivery side of the equation, and you’ve got a clear blueprint for tomorrow’s transportation (if you take as a given the autonomous vehicle itself, of course).

via Will a World of Driverless Cars Be Heaven or Hell? – Robin Chase – The Atlantic Cities.

Am I too late?

The Neuroscience of Car Dependence – Eric Jaffe – The Atlantic Cities

The researchers cite recent research on the nature of drug habits: they’re suggesting you’re addicted to your car. Perhaps more intriguing is recent work on the role that stress plays in shifting cognitive function from flexible parts of the brain (in the hippocampus) to procedural ones (in the striatum). In brain imaging studies, test participants placed under stress rely more on the striatum to determine their behavior — overwhelmed by life, we revert to habit.

That helps explain why choosing to travel by a certain mode in the morning often doesn’t feel like a choice at all. Getting ready to leave the house has always been a stressful time, confronted with an annoying commute and a new day at the office, and the stress only increases with the urge to get a head start on work on our phones. (Morning commutes are the clearest example, but the process applies to any trips secondary to their purpose.) In light of this overload, conserving brain power with regard to travel choice is actually the wise move.

Knowing that people don’t think twice about mode choice makes it all the more important to get other options right the first time.

via The Neuroscience of Car Dependence – Eric Jaffe – The Atlantic Cities.

Who Is at Fault When a Driverless Car Gets in an Accident? – John Villasenor – The Atlantic Cities

Design defects are another commonly asserted theory of liability. Suppose that the software for controlling braking in an autonomous vehicle doesn’t sufficiently increase braking power when the vehicle needs to stop on a downhill slope. If, as a result, a vehicle causes a frontal collision i.e., impacts a car in front of it, a person who suffers injuries or economic losses due to the collision could file a design-defects claim against the manufacturer.Even when a design is sound, manufacturers can be liable for manufacturing defects. If an autonomous vehicle technology provider accidentally ships some vehicles with an early, non-market-ready version of software containing a flaw not present in the newer version that was supposed to have been shipped, a person injured in an accident attributable to this flaw could seek to recover damages from the technology provider.

via Who Is at Fault When a Driverless Car Gets in an Accident? – John Villasenor – The Atlantic Cities.