Driverless Google cars will break speed limits …

The Times 22 August 2014, James Dean, Technology Correspondent

Google has programmed its driverless cars to break speed limits by up to 10mph because it believes that allowing them to do so will improve road safety.

Dmitri Dolgov, the lead software engineer on Google’s driverless cars project, said research had shown that keeping to a speed limit when nearby cars were going faster was more dangerous than speeding up.

Google is testing its cars on the streets of Mountain View, the Silicon Valley town that is home to Google’s headquarters. The cars have not yet been tested in the UK, but Vince Cable, the business secretary, announced last month that companies will be able to test driverless cars in certain cities from the start of next year.

The Highway Code states that vehicles cannot travel faster than the national speed limit in any circumstance. The government has promised to review road rules in advance of the introduction of driverless car testing.

Some research has suggested that a car moving slowly amid faster-moving traffic is likely to cause other vehicles to bunch up behind it, which could lead to an accident. “Thousands and thousands of people are killed in car accidents every year,” Mr Dolgov said. Allowing driverless cars to speed “could change that”.

J Christian Gerdes, faculty director of the REVS Institute for Automotive Research at Stanford University, said that the Google car’s ability to recognise unusual objects and to react in abnormal situations were significant hurdles that had yet to be overcome.

There were also ethical issues with driverless cars, he said. “Should a car try to protect its occupants at the expense of hitting pedestrians? And will we accept it when machines make mistakes, even if they make far fewer mistakes than humans?”

There are also unresolved issues around legal liability when a driverless car is involved in a crash.

Google’s driverless car project, which began in 2009, is being run by its Google X experimental technology division. The same unit developed Google Glass, the “smart” eyewear that was released earlier this year.

* Britain is a nation of middle-lane hoggers even though motorists facing a fine of £100 for breaking the law. A study by ICM Research found that almost six drivers in ten say they hog the middle lane of the motorway and almost one in ten admit that they always or regularly do so.

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