While most of us can only dream about one day getting the chance to sit behind the wheel of one of Google's revolutionary self-driving cars, one lucky California man recently did just that.
Google this week posted a YouTube video (below) showing Morgan Hill, Calif. resident Steve Mahan, who is legally blind, being taken on a ride in its self-driving Toyota Prius. Google released the video to celebrate that it has safely completed 200,000 miles of computer-lead driving.
The video shows Mahan sitting in the driver's seat as the car steers itself, using radar and lasers to make sure the road is clear. The car takes him through the drive-through of Taco Bell, then to the dry cleaners as Mahan jokes that "this is some of the best driving I've ever done."
"Ninety-five percent of my vision is gone, I'm well past legally blind," Mahan says in the video. "Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and flexibility to go the places I both want to go and need to go, when I need to do those things."
Google said it arranged Mahan's ride through a carefully programmed route as a special test outside of its core research efforts.
"We organized this test as a technical experiment, but we think it's also a promising look at what autonomous technology may one day deliver if rigorous technology and safety standards can be met," Google wrote in a Gooogle+ post Wednesday.
The Web giant announced its self-driving car project back in 2010 with the goal to "make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient." But don't get too excited about the prospect of owning one of Google's self-driving cars anytime soon — the search giant said it still has a lot of design and testing to do before the technology is ready.
Last month, Nevada became the first state in the U.S. to approve self-driving cars, a necessary step for Google's vision to become a reality. A California state senator is crafting a similar bill. For more, see Ford Taking a Slow Road to Self-Driving Cars.
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