Blind man gets to be first test driver of Google Car

In 2010 Google started showing off their progress with autonomous self driving cars. So far these cars have driven more than 200,000 miles. During these test drives each car has a driver in the front seat to monitor and make sure that all is running smoothly.

In all those miles they have only experienced one accident and it was only because they were rear ended.

Yesterday Google released a new video demonstrating the progress of the project.

Steve Mahan gets to be the first outside of the project to test the car. See his drive on the carefully planned out route below.

Steve has lost 95% of his visibility. A car that can drive by it self with him operating the wheel for emergencies opens up the world of what he can do. Currently he is limited to where he can go and when he can do things. He says that having a Self-Driving car would allow him the flexibility to go where he wants to go  as well as where he needs to go.

At the end of the video Google tags the video with #0000000001. To me this is a very inspiring way to show there are plans to fully implement a self-driving car system in the near future.

These cars in the past may have been seen as the lazy mans way to drive, but really there is much more to this experiment.