Sunday Rerun: Look ma, no hands!

Google thinks they're really ahead of the curve with the driverless cars that they're testing, but there was a man 50-some years ago who drove a magic car that folded up like a briefcase when he got to work.

So what if it was George Jetson!  Your point being?

Back to real life, one of the Googlemobiles was stopped for driving too slowly last month...this took place in California where police stopped a car with no driver for driving 24 mph in a 35-mph zone.

Can you just imagine the officer walking up to the car and seeing no one at the wheel?  "Uh...invisible license and registration, please..."

I have no idea why Google is spending a fortune on driverless cars. How useful can they be?  How can they pay tolls - by having a saucer full of change on the front seat, and having the tolltaker reach in and take the fare?

How do they talk to the drive-thru window person at McDonald's?

How do they roll down the window to holler at other drivers? Oh that's right.  There is no one to do the hollering.

Google says its cars have a "library of various sirens" and they have an inner app to identify them, so when an police car, fire engine or medic unit come up on them, the car will "drive more conservatively until it has a better sense of where the
sirens are coming from." And the automatic autos have cameras for eyes to "see" flashing lights at an intersection, so they will yield to the emergency vehicle.

That's nice.  I still don't get the point of replacing a human driver who would work for $50,000 a year with a device that costs $50,000,000, but that's just me.

Google says their robot cars have been on the roads for 6 years, have driven over 2 million miles, and have had 17 "minor incidents," which is what I told my father it was when I skidded on ice that time.  They also say that their driverless cars have never been the cause of an accident, which, again, is what I told my father that snowy morning.

Here's what I really love about the Googlenews on this brave new world of unmanned Impalas. Last week, they received a patent for a device that will equip its cars with robotic hands to make hand gestures.

This is science following mankind!  I see people making gestures all the time with their hands, or sometimes, just one finger.