Google’s self-driving car to be tested in the UK

 

It was announced earlier this week, that the Google’s driverless car will be coming to British roads later on this year.

The people at Oxford University will be carrying out this revolutionary testing that could change the way we all drive.

The car works by using sensors, lasers and cameras to navigate around. Google hopes that the car will change driver’s lives by allowing them to work or relax on their daily commutes.

The trials that will be taking place later this year were revealed in a blueprint for Britain’s roads published by the Department for Transport. It said that the Google driverless car has already been trialled extensively in the US and has the ability to move on their own “using knowledge of the environment in which they are driving”.

As of August 2012, Google had announced that they have completed over 300,000 autonomous driving miles with no accidents. Three states in the US have already passed the laws permitting use of these self-driving cars including Nevada, California and Florida.

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google has said that the autonomous cars are far safer than human-driven cars. Experts say that these cars could save thousands of lives by controlling the distance between vehicles as well as its quick reactions to changings within its surrounding environment.

It looks like you may be able to get your hands on the Google car a lot sooner then we may have previously expected but don’t get too excited just yet. Google haven’t got any immediate plans to commercially develop the system but in the future they hope to develop a business which would market the system to car manufacturers.

Also be sure to keep in mind that these self-driving cars won’t come cheap as they have around £100,000 worth of equipment in them, so if you want to get your hands on one of these you may want to start saving now!