General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner is the keynote speaker at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and is expected to make quite an announcement when he takes the stage tomorrow. According to a new report, Wagoner will announce that GM will begin testing driverless vehicles in 2015, with hopes of having them on the road by 2018.
The biggest hurdle in the transition to driverless vehicles could actually be the human factor, not the technology. Systems such as radar-based cruise control, motion sensors, lane-change warning devices, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping are already in place, but government regulations and liability laws could slow the technology’s progression to reality. “This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, said.
Carnegie Mellon’s GM sponsored Chevrolet Tahoe took first prize at this year’s DARPA Grand Challenge, an event for driverless cars.
The key advantage of driverless cars would be the elimination of human mistakes — a factor believed to be responsible for 95% of the 42,000 U.S. traffic deaths that occur annually. “We might be able to cut those numbers down by a factor of 50 percent,” Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering, told CNN. “Just imagine all the funerals that won’t take place.”
It remains to be seen if the 10-year goal is actually attainable.
