5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2012–2022
3:02 · 11M views · Mar 28, 2012
Google's 2012 video of Steve Mahan, who is legally blind, taking a drive in its self-driving car including a drive-through stop. It was shared as a human-interest demonstration of the technology's promise.
Cited as an early milestone of autonomous driving, and later as an example of over-optimistic timelines.
5 comments from Hacker News
Google showed a self-driving car taking a blind guy through a Taco Bell drive-through. Clearly ready for prime time, probably just a year off. this video That video was released on March 28, 2012. Nine years ago in 48 days. You'd think if it was just a little regulatory red tape a multi-billion dollar corporation or two (or three) would have figured it out in nine years. Maybe its more than just a few rules changes that's keeping truly full self driving carson some very select routes.
I disagree, they have already made significant progress on this and have done hundreds of thousands of miles with actual self driving cars. this video I think with something like this, if it isn't Google then it will be one of the large car manufacturers first. I just don't see a random company popping out of nowhere and bringing something like this to the market as the costs involved in the production are going to be huge.
They've been working with the guy in the video for over 6 years [1], and he's the former CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, which has aims for "a future where awareness, legislation and technology meet at a crossroads to provide individuals who are blind and visually impaired the same opportunities as their sighted peers" [2]. It sounds like they're taking this seriously. [1] this video [2] [LINK]
There are actually quite a few driverless trains already[1] and Google's demonstrations of their driverless car are getting increasingly[2] impressive[3]. The question is really only when the transition to driverless cars will happen - we're long past the if . [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] this video
This video is just over 10 years old today: this video It shows a waymo/google driverless car driving a multi-mile route on public streets with no supervision. And today we're seeing... Pretty much the exact same thing!