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HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] writes:

Megan McArdle writes at Bloomberg that the California Department of Motor Vehicles has proposed new rules for driverless cars that would prohibit cars without a steering wheel or a brake pedal -- or a human driver ready to take the wheel, an enormous setback for Google’s program [bloombergview.com], which is evolving toward smaller, lower-speed vehicles with none of these things. There are basically two ways to innovate toward a “Level Four” truly autonomous car. The first way is to innovate system by system, starting with a car that can handle some tasks on its own (like cruise control), and eventually arriving at a car that can handle all of them. In between, the car will be doing a lot of the driving, but a human will be standing by, ready to take over if needed. This is the approach most automakers have chosen [wired.com]. But there's a big problem with this approach.: the lag between when the car realizes it can’t handle a problem, and when the human can grab the wheel. Unfortunately, when the car has gotten into trouble is probably the exact moment when a lag in reaction time is most problematic.

Google is moving toward the other approach: Take the driver out of the loop entirely [theatlantic.com]. You start at Level Four automation, but slow and safe and in a limited range. According to McArdle Google’s driverless cars are now essentially well-padded golf carts. "That has some drawbacks, since you can’t go very far very fast. But it does let you completely route around the safety issues that are created by mostly autonomous systems," says McArdle. " As the company works out the bugs on driverless cars, it can gradually scale them up in speed and size, and expand their range." Unfortunately California's new rules force Google to put wheels and brakes back into its cars reintroducing the very problems of human error and folly that Google is trying to engineer away [bloombergview.com]. "Google can try to find a state with a more progress-friendly DMV, of course. But the company has already done an immense amount of work mapping the area around Mountain View. Letting that work go to waste because the government of California just can’t get past the old way of doing things [bloomberg.com] would be a shame."

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