Bye, Bye Bus Driver

Australia - A pilot transit bus - really a cute shuttle vehicle - is being tested in Perth. Hopes are to expand the 2.5-km/1.6-mile route if all goes well. This is not a relatively complex autonomous vehicle. It will go slowly and travel on a route with plenty of pedestrians to watch out and stop for. (I do not believe in avoiding finishing sentences with prepositions.) This project required a unique permit from the state government. 

Russia - Maybe it's the Putin-uber macho mystique, but Russia is (like the US Army) working on a driverless tank, or, as it is officially referred to, an armored vehicle. The tank can fit 10 soldiers and their gear, so it is also the first tiny driverless barracks. This video is like a combination of a bad car commercial and a bad the-vehicle-as-villain scary movie. 

It is truly a weird thing that I am reading any article from Popular Mechanics, but the worlds of mechanics, technology, and transportation are merging when it comes to autonomous vehicles.

And on the farm

It's not only soldiers whose jobs will be redefined or lost. We're doing away with farm hands as well, at least the ones holding onto to steering wheels. Driverless tractors are being perfected and soon to be sold to farmers everywhere. You will be able to use your i-pad or other tablet to start and monitor the tractor as it plants and does other stuff. (I'm from Brooklyn. Assume I know nothing about agricultural operations.) Warning: The video on the linked webpage is creepy.

Port of Long Beach to Go Driverless and Google News

Supposedly, late in 2015, we will see a new terminal at the Port of Long Beach, called Middle Harbor (reference to Middle Earth?), that will have driverless tractors. Some tractors are already on site and working, supervised by humans.

Google is talking pilot-less planes for commercial air travel, though flying logistics are complicated because planes do not operate on a two-dimensional street surface network, but rather move up and down as well as in other directions. I do not know how the essentially driverless aspects of airline travel now relate to those where we have a pilot in control. Drone deliveries are also part of the plan. No more brown shorts on those UPS delivery men; maybe brown drones.

Really?

Anti-driverless writers have embraced the news that Google cars have been involved in 11 California accidents despite the fact that the accidents were very minor and that no one was hurt. They fail to emphasize that the cause of the accidents were human drivers of other vehicles. There is no indication that human drivers in the Google cars would have been able to avoid these accidents; nor have we seen data that the number of accidents are high or low when considering the number of miles driven and where they were driven.