Nevada drivers may soon share the road with cars that don’t need them.
US Department of Motor Vehicles officials said this week that Google had been issued with the US’s first licence to test self-driving cars on public streets.
Demonstrations on the Las Vegas Strip showed the car was as safe – or perhaps safer – than a human.
For one thing, the engineers programmed the car to create a “virtual buffer zone” around obstacles, making it more aware than some drivers. “It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe,” Nevada department director Bruce Breslow said.
The self-driving technology guides a car with little or no intervention by human operators using laser radar to detect obstacles. – Daily Mail