The Technology of the Slef-Driving Car Created by Google

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Google has always been known for as a great search engine on the Internet and now it helps manage our lives with applications like Google maps, Google Translate and Google Drive. A person can do just about anything with Google except drive. Imagine a society where there are no traffic accidents and no speeding tickets or road rage, where cars drive themselves. Google is currently developing and testing this technology. Cars driving without a driver, it’s the start of a new era of vehicles.
The technology of the self-driving car created by Google is based on a Global Positioning System (GPS); this GPS is programed with the help of Google maps. It also uses artificial intelligence software (AI) that will detect anything close to the car and mimic decisions made by human drivers (Markoff, 2010). The Google car also uses automatic braking system (ABS), a special rangefinder and traction control for added safety. Self-driving cars are safer, allowing them to be built lighter, save fuel and driven closer together. This will allow more people to travel on the roads at one time (Markoff, 2010). This has the potential to save lives because 1.2 million lives are lost every year due to road traffic accidents, with this technology that number could be cut in half (“Google Developing Self-driving, 2013).
Although the technology is very advanced, a driver is still needed in the vehicle. Computers are not as reliable as we would like and in a self-driving car the computer may also encounter a problem, therefore a human driver would need to take control of the vehicle. A human driver also needs to put in the coordinates to the destination. Human drivers can benefit from the GPS in an unfamiliar location by putting the coordinates in the...

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...rivacy, terrorists attacks, even kidnappings. New laws will need to be discussed dealing with liability and insurance. This technology will help humans advance in different technology but it will also cause some to be lazy. It is a simple game of cause and effect, some causes could be great but the affect could not be as good, or vise versa.

Works Cited

Google developing self-driving cars. (2013, February 11). Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com/tech/google-developing-self-driving-cars.htm
Markoff, J. (2010, October 9). Google cars drive themselves, in traffic. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Martelle, S. (2012, May 11). Self driving cars and the liability issues they raise. Retrieved from www.protectconsumerjustice.org/self-driving-cars-and-the-liability-issues-they-raise.html

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