02 Sep Driverless Cars’ Nemesis: Homo Sapiens

Interesting report in The New York Times today about the greatest challenge facing the advent of driverless cars. The effort, mostly driven (pun intended) by Google, seems to be going well overall as hundreds of cars have been tested for a number of years now. The two main problems seem to be (a) humans driving cars still find a way to hit the driverless one and (b) the driverless car is too strict about following all road rules which can cause problems.

Indeed most experts believe that the incidence of car accidents will drop dramatically with the advent of this amazing development since human error, ultimately, will be eliminated. But for now, in addition to humans in other cars hitting the robot, the other problem is that the robot is just too nice. It makes a full stop at every stop sign and can’t seem to ever find a moment to go ahead at a 4-way stop if cars keep coming since most do not do a full stop. Maybe it needs to learn to read another driver with her hand up waving and saying, “Go ahead.”

The big question for any entrepreneur: if you build it, will they come? Or in this case drive? Great technology is great if it solves an unmet need in the market. This thing, I think is great and will catch on. But they’ve got to get the kinks worked out.