Posted on 06/25/2012 5:53:42 AM PDT by Silentgypsy
Google's self-driving car has fascinated our minds with its technological promise since being introduced in 2010. But yesterday, the self-driving car touched our hearts.
Google posted a video of the self-driving car taking a legally blind man for a spin, showing one of the possibilities and benefits that could come from the technology.
"Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go when I need to do those things," Steve Mahan says in the video.
The self-driving car takes Mahan to Taco Bell for a quick meal and a dry cleaner to pick up his clothes.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Taco Bell? Shouldn’t it instead take him to the local farmers’ market for organic arugala and a low fat soy chai-latte?
I want a *GPS Warning* to know those “blind car routes” well-ahead of time, so I can stay far away from the area! This is a disaster in the making, IMO. Something’s bound to happen.
Del Taco would be a much better choice.
All in the perspective eh!
That’s how it translated his request to “take me to the Mexican Phone Company”.
They will be safer than the ‘normal’ routes where people think they see things and try to cut you off all the time.
Agreed, the cars might be fine by themselves but other drivers are unpredictable and robotic technology doesn’t deal with unpredictability very well.
John Spartan: So?
Lenina Huxley: So, now all restaurants are Taco Bell.
Reminds me of another ‘blind’ story...
Back in the mid-90’s, NASA TV had a kid’s show where a panel of teenagers took calls from other kids who had questions and one caller claimed to be an 11 year-old girl who had been blind since birth. She asked the panel if they thought she could be an astronaut some day and they all agreed that yes, she could and to never give up on her dream, that if she could imagine being an astronaut then she could absolutely be an astronaut or do anything else she set out to do, etc.
If the panel had been comprised of men who’d actually walked on the moon or were astronauts themselves, what do you think their answers would have been?
Taco Bell hasn’t been attacked by liberals yet. Now if they had sent him to McDonald’, Moochelle would have had Barry shut down the program by giving it a federal loan.
Really, I can’t imagine anyone telling a blind child not to dream of and pursue anything they want.
Concealed carry licensees often go to WalMart for their first experience carrying concealed.
I wonder if driverless car proponents will “go to Taco Bell” for their first “drive?”
My grandfather used to do business with Jim McDivitt after he left NASA. He always told us kids that we could all be working in space some day.
I want the route so I can find the car.... Hit it and blame google and sue them for billions!
Is your GPS doing flaky things lately? I don’t trust ours any more since it tried to give us a 9-mile detour to a destination that was about 400 feet away.
Hey, it’s thinking like that which led to people telling a young Kenyan Muslim that he could be President of the United States if he wanted to. Look where that’s got us!
A minor sub part of the story, but very interesting trilogy (book 3 in progress) in which a self propagating meme has arisen amongst people via the net which evokes itself as a leaderless attempt to eliminate human civilization utilizing the self loathing subsets of radical environmentalists and terrorists.
It's easily as good as One Second After, with the added plus' of slightly into the future and global aspects.
(Allstate mayhem commercial)
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