The ultimate cruise control: California OKs driverless cars
California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill Tuesday that officially allows driverless cars on public thoroughfares. Driverless cars are coming, whether we like it or not, according to the Car Connection.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin stands on stage during a bill signing by California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., for driverless cars at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday. The legislation will open the way for driverless cars in the state.
Eric Risberg/AP
Google began testing autonomous vehicles on California roads in 2009. Now, it can do so legally: yesterday afternoon, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 1298, which officially allows self-drivingcars on public thoroughfares.
Skip to next paragraph
High Gear Media’s flagship website offers news, reviews, and the latest shopping tools for the cars that matter to US consumers. For more expert insights from Car Connection editors and opinions from around the Web, click here.
Recent posts
-
05.23.13
Tesla $465 million federal loan repaid early -
05.21.13
Eleanor Mustang sold for $1 million. Used in 'Gone in 60 Seconds' film. -
05.21.13
Ford rises, Prius falls in hybrids' solid start to 2013 -
05.19.13
Toyota class-action suit worth up to $1.6 billion on the way -
05.18.13
Florida shortens yellow lights, traffic tickets soar
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
As Mashable points out, Google hasn't technically broken any California laws over the past three years, since the state doesn't require vehicles to have drivers. That's because when those laws were written, autonomous vehicles were as far-fetched as email and smartphones. Now that self-driving cars are a real "thing", however, Google and legislators like California State Senator Alex Padilla are doing the sensible thing and laying out some ground rules.
History
Google's autonomous car program is headed up by Sebastian Thrun, who led a Stanford team to victory in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with a self-driving vehicle that traveled 132 miles across the desert. The program began as a partnership with Google Maps, allowing autonomous vehicles to help gather information for Google Street View.
To date, Google has racked up over 300,000 miles in its autonomous vehicles. Those vehicles have been involved in very few accidents, and to the best of our knowledge, accidents have only occurred when human drivers were in control of the car (or when other drivers have rear-ended Google's vehicle).
In the summer of 2011, Nevada became the first state to allow autonomous vehicles on its roads, and Google debuted America's very first autonomous vehicle license plate the following spring.
In April of 2012, Florida joined the autonomous car ranks, when CS/HB 1207 unanimously passed both houses of the state legislature. That said, the bill wasn't without its critics: in fact, some tried -- unsuccessfully -- to turn autonomous vehicles into self-driving boogeymen to scare elderly voters.
Become part of the Monitor community