Google Really Distrusts Human Drivers

Google Self-Driving Car Prototype (Credit: © Google)

Google seems to have some pretty big trust issues when it comes to human drivers. As Car and Driver recently dug up, the tech giant is pushing to get its weird-looking koala cars fully certified to be used on public roads, but not without difficulty from NHTSA.

If you haven’t seen the inside of Google’s koala vehicle, it’s a little shocking. It looks more like something you would climb into for a ride at Disneyland, because there are absolutely zero driver controls: no steering wheel, pedals, rear mirror, nothing. If the firmware or any apps malfunction, the occupants can’t take over and pilot the car to safety, because supposedly they’d make the situation worse or something like that. There aren’t even physical lock actuators, because you can’t trust the pesky humans with locking or unlocking the doors, ever.

You’ve got to wonder if the visionaries at Google thought Jurassic Park was just a book about dinosaurs.

Google’s taking a big gamble on its vehicle software, one that many in the industry feel is foolhardy, at best. If the positioning system is only a few inches off, that could be the difference between falling off a sheer cliff on some mountain road, running onto the sidewalk in the city or steering into oncoming traffic on a two-lane highway. Without physical controls for humans to intervene in any way, there can be absolutely zero error from the autonomous drive unit. When was the last time a computer or smartphone ran error-free for months at a time?

The only possible explanation for Google’s approach is that it absolutely hates human drivers. Why else would the company not want to build in provisions for occupants to take physical control of a vehicle in at least some situations?

Fortunately, Google’s quest to completely eliminate any possibility of human vehicle operation isn’t going off without a hitch. NHTSA is reportedly only going to grant the company temporary exemptions for the koalamobiles, instead of embracing the whole car-as-an-amusement-park-ride concept. There are a bunch of hurdles standing in the way of vehicles without any physical controls taking the roads by storm, and that’s probably a good thing.