The future is now slowly transforming itself into reality, and autonomous driving will no longer be a thing that exists only in sci-fi movies as California’s governor Jerry Brown had just signed a law that allows self-driving cars on the state’s public roads.
This historical move took place at the Google headquarters over at Mountain View, and even saw the governor himself riding at the passenger side of an autonomous Toyota Prius. Accompanying him in the car were both Google co-founder Sergey Brin and State Senator Alex Padilla at the back seats, and company engineer Chris Urmson at the driver’s seat, just to make sure everything goes on fine during the ride.
“We’re looking at science fiction becoming tomorrow’s reality”, quoted Brown just before the bill’s signing.
Google’s self-driving cars had clocked many miles and hours in extensive testing, and these cars navigate through the streets from a combination of video cameras, radar and laser sensors, and even data collected from manually-driven cars. Following California’s footsteps is the state of Nevada, where they had requested the Department of Transportation to draft out the necessary guidelines.
The signed law basically defines the safety and performance regulations in the further testing of self-driving cars, going into effect in 2013. Among those stated in the law is that an “operator” or driver must be at the driver’s seat at all times to take control if needed.
