Monkey see, monkey do. It seems that Google’s self-driving car has spawned a whole raft of copycat projects, all claiming to be better than the rest.
Now, Oxford University is anxious to spend some sponsorship money and make ridiculous claims and predictions that are unlikely to come to fruition. It has developed a self-driving car which is apparently better than every other self-drive car ever conceived, because “it relies heavily on an on-board 3D street map, instead of many sensors”.
Actually, the Google car – you know, Google: the people who do Google Earth and all that stuff – does make use of the “cloud” a little. So a bit of an inflated claim here, I think.
But anyway, big deal. And let’s hope the “street map” can cope with sudden closures and temporary roadworks to stop the thing barging into situations it doesn’t know about (oh, I bet it has sensors to fall back on then).
The leader of the project claims that it could lead to an “arms race” amongst car manufacturers:
You can imagine one company advertising a model of car which, on average, drives itself for 10 minutes a day and then another manufacturer will come out with one that does 15 minutes.
I think he should stay off the caffeine or brightly coloured soft drinks for a while.
Although I’m not necessarily in agreement with it, there is evidence to suggest that over-reliance on technology and safety features leads to lack of caution on the roads – a recent story about blind-spot accidents and the new annual saga of being warned to fit winter tyres (with people believing that you can do anything you want once you have them fitted) being just two examples. Why anyone would want to sit in a vehicle you don’t have to touch (also known as “a bus” – and I’m joking) is beyond me.