On Friday, May 15, the project director of Google’s self-driving cars, Chris Urmson, announced in a blog post that their self driving cars are prepared to be tested on public roads in Mountain View, California.
During the road tests, the vehicles will be accompanied by a safety driver and will travel at a speed of 25mph. The vehicles will be equipped with a removable steering wheel along with a brake pedal and an accelerator pedal.
This initiative by Google is merely the first step in a long road ahead to commercial production for autonomous cars. Other companies such as Tesla, BMW and Mercedes have also started projects to make self-driving cars; Mercedes and BMW already coming out with an impressive prototypes.
Although very developed, autonomous cars still have many obstacles to overcome in order to reach all safety standards. Google said that they were involved in 11 accidents over the past six years.
Only time will tell as to when these cars will become a real consumer item, however it is undoubtable that they are coming in full force.