New Models of Driverless Cars, Some Sticky

When I was a little girl, every Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) we would pass a car dealership, with new cars, on our walk to Sheepshead Bay, that's the real Brooklyn, to throw away our sins. It's true. That's why the bay needed to be cleaned up. But we could not pass that dealership without a big pause. My father loved to look at those new, shiny cars in the window.

Well, we are sufficiently into the driverless age that we are getting second and third generation prototypes.

Honda Acura - Seems fancy. No technology breakthroughs; no design wows. This is NOT completely autonomous, which Honda is saying is at least 15 years away. Translation: Honda is nowhere near ready. Here's a link to some more details and a video.

GM - Chevy Volt EV, with driverless sensors, spotted on the streets of San Francisco. We need Karl Malden and Michael Douglas to investigate. (If you are a millennial, you probably do not get the reference to the long-ago TV show, the Streets of San Francisco.) Here's the theme song.

Google - According to several reports (I'm linking to just one), Google has patented and is, presumably, adding to its driverless vehicles a system to be used when a car crashes for spreading or oozing a sticky substance, akin to flypaper, onto the exterior of the vehicle. Wait, this is brilliant. Meant as a pedestrian safety technique, the flypaper-like substance would stick to the hit pedestrian - gluing the person to the car - so that the pedestrian would not be flung and further injured. Messy, but not harmed as badly. On all normal days, the car would have an "eggshell like" covering so that ordinary leaning against a vehicle would not result in ruined clothes and sticky hands.