Google's driverless car news are in the media as the Mountain View, search engine firm makes yet another entry into 'smart' gadgets. Following the somewhat ambiguous appeal for Google Glass, Google's announcement that it is in the process of creating an OS for smartwatches, the Android Wear is very exciting, say Google watchers.
But how will the highway traffic police deal with driverless cars.
Following an incident where a lady was charged for wearing Google Glass while driving and then released by a court ruling, laws and regulations concerning wearable devices, smart gadgets and driverless cars presents an unusually well thought out dilemma.
Since Google has begun testing its self driving cars in California, it makes sense for California to have the law in place first.
"California is trying to do something unusual in this age of rapidly evolving technology - get ahead of a big new development before it goes public, reports Columbus Dispatch, adding, "By the end of the year, the Department of Motor Vehicles must write rules to regulate cars that rely on computers - not the owner - to do the driving."
Some questions that the Department of Motor Vehicles is looking at includes the folowing factors:
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- How will the state know the cars are safe?
- Does a driver even need to be behind the wheel?
- Can manufacturers mine data from onboard computers to make product pitches based on where the car goes or set insurance rates based on how it is driven?
- Do owners get docked points on their license if they send a car to park itself and it slams into another vehicle?"
The commercial driverless cars could be out on the roads within ten years.
Those rules came after Google Inc. already had driven its fleet of Toyota Priuses and Lexuses, fitted with an array of sensors including radar and lasers, hundreds of thousands of miles in California. Major automakers also have tested their own models.
Now, the DMV is scrambling to regulate the broader use of the cars. With the federal government apparently years away from developing regulations, California's rules effectively could become the national standard.
Much of the initial discussion last week focused on privacy concerns.
California's law requires autonomous vehicles to log records of operation so the data can be used to reconstruct a crash.
But the cars "must not become another way to track us in our daily lives," John M. Simpson of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog said. Simpson added that Google was hesitant to add privacy guarantees, reports The Associated Press.