Hastings & Hastings Considers Self-Driving Vehicle

    PHOENIX, AZ, November 27, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Self-driving vehicles are undergoing extensive testing, and projections have shown that there may be as many as 10 million self-driving cars out on the road by 2020. Hastings & Hastings loves to see these incredible advances in technology, and considers what the world may be like as self-driving cars start becoming increasingly available.

Google is currently the leader in the industry of self-driving cars. Google X leads the self-driving car project. Most self-driving cars are also electric cars. The head of the self-driving car project is an engineer names Sebastian Thrun. Turn is a former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is also one of the co-inventors of Google Street View, which is a companion technology of the Google-Self Driving Car.

As self-driving technology becomes better and better, companies developing these vehicles are facing the need to commence road tests. Currently four states have passed legislation allowing autonomous cars to be tested on their public roads. Nevada was among the first states to permit the operation of driverless cars, while Michigan, Florida, and California have since joined them.

Self-driving cars use a mix of camera, radar, and laser technology to map and navigate the world around them. Google's vehicles have been reported to possess over $150,000 of such equipment. Autonomous vehicles can create high definition inch-precision maps of the area they are driving.

Technology may not be the only thing holding autonomous vehicles back. It is likely that there are going to be a series of legal issues that crop up as the fact of self-driving cars becomes a reality. The first question to consider, is that of liability. If a self-driving car is found to be the cause of an accident, who is held liable? Is it the passengers fault, or is it the manufacturers? Regulatory framework is going to have to be built.

To date, Google has 23 self-driving cars, who have been involved in 14 minor traffic incidents. Google maintains that their self-driving cars were not at fault in any of these incidents.

Hastings & Hastings is excited to see these incredible technological development and looks eagerly towards what the future may hold. Hastings & Hastings likewise wonders what legal regulations will need to be built to govern self-driving cars.

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