It must have been exciting in the early 1900’s to see the first motorized automobiles roaming through the streets. It won’t be long until we see another miracle of technology: The Driverless Car.

 

Using the most advance technologies, radar and global positioning satellite navigation (GPS), Google has created a small fleet of driverless cars.  So far, Google’s fleet has racked up more than 435,000 miles without causing an accident.  Although this marvel of technology sounds promising, it’s still a long way off before we can sit back behind the steering wheel of our car, plug in our destination and let the car’s auto pilot take us to our grandma’s house for thanksgiving dinner.

We will, however, see a lot of the technology slowly being introduced in mass production among many car lines. For example; many cars now parallel park themselves. Mercedes offers “Steering assist”, which the helps with lane changes. And, collision detection systems are being introduced on more and more vehicles.

There are also legal issues to consider, which will probably be the biggest obstacle. As with any new technology, in time all the wrinkles will be ironed out and the driverless car will become another accepted way of public transportation.

So what’s next, the flying car? You never know!