Google's driverless car has been criticised by an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) review, which says the car can only drive on 1 per cent of roads.
The roads in question are of course those in the USA, but the headline-grabbing criticism sounds bad from wherever you're watching the driverless car story unfold.
The MIT article also points out the car's inability to recognise snow and rain, and pot holes. Parking too, it says, is among its unsolved problems.
But is the criticism unfair? After all, the driverless car is in its early stages – Google is hardly about to start making and selling these vehicles. And focusing on the ‘one per cent of roads’ issue doesn't make much sense – because Google's engineers must thoroughly map test routes until the car understands them completely; once the tech firm's boffins have worked out how to map one route sufficiently, they can map out the rest of the road network.
Of course, there are certainly big questions ahead. Will the driverless car really be safer than driving a car yourself? What happens when the car comes across an obstacle that is not on the map? Will car insurance bills drop dramatically? Will breakdown insurance firms and garages need to employ computer specialists as well as mechanics?
Exciting times are ahead for the driverless car, and despite recent criticisms, the possibilities should perhaps outweigh the doubts. With so much passion and money behind the driverless car project, it’s hard to see it failing.
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