While a self-driving car might not be ready for big time action on roads throughout the rest of the world, this does not mean that there is no future at all for such a thing to happen. In fact, Google is proud to say that plenty of progress has been made in terms of its self-driving car’s capability, being able to handle the likes of signaling bicyclists, railway crossings, and construction zones. In other words, such capability would allow Google’s self-driving car to be able to better assess real-world risks.
Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car project, shared, “We still have lots of problems to solve, including teaching the car to drive more streets in Mountain View before we tackle another town, but thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously.”
After all, city driving is a whole lot different compared to driving on the freeway, since there are way so many other variables to consider, with many more objects that move according to different rules of the road within a tiny area. Having clocked up more than 700,000 miles along the way, Google still has plenty more to do if they want this to end up as a viable mainstream solution for the masses, but they do look as though they are on the right track.
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