A car that drives me? Sign me up!

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently announced that the search engine giant is actively testing autonomous cars and has already logged 140,000 miles with its test autos.

The way these cars work is through the use of sensors, video cameras and laser range finders in tandem with info collected by manually driven vehicles that Google has sent out to various map routes. The automated cars is then relayed the info gathered by the other cars after it is processed at Google’s data centers.

One of the primary goals of these cars is to, not only, cut energy consumption but to also cut the amount of deaths currently caused by traffic accidents (roughly 1.2 million people per year). Google hopes that with these cars, traffic accidents can mostly be avoided; because even when a human doesn’t see something coming, the car will and will then act accordingly.

Although these vehicles are self-driving, none of them have yet to make a journey without a driver present to take over and additionally, police officers have always been told as to what is going on when tests have been conducted.

If you're interested in more info, you can read more about it here - LINK! And although skeptics think that a fully automated car is a long way off, I'm still hopeful, I would love to be able to sleep my way through my commute.

Road Rage

Every morning as I drive down the Northway, I consider just getting off an exit, finding the nearest Staples and buying a banner that says "KARMA GETS TAILGATERS!" ... This of course, is for the moments during my commute when I'm in a good mood. Most of the rest of the commute is spent yelling things like "WHAT ARE YOU FREAKING CRAZY?" and contemplating flipping people off. However, since I get on the Northday quite a bit upstate, I do not flip people off, as well, some of them probably have shotguns, and are probably crazy, and I'd rather not die in traffic, even in an unconventional shot-gun death in traffic, even if it would make the news.


Seriously, I really do not understand people who think that pushing back and forth through traffic gets them anywhere. The Northway backs up, and it comes to a standstill, yes, this sucks, but freakin deal with it. You nearly colliding with 8 or 9 vehicles in order to get off the exit a mere two spots ahead of where you were (because you were right behind me at exit 12, and managed to get off exit 7 a whopping one space a head of me) blows my mind. It blows my mind even worse when you have CHILDREN in you car. The only thing that makes these maneuvers okay is if one of those children is DYING and you simply must get the to the hospital. Of course, the manner in which you are driving pretty much ensures a good possibility that you will have company when you get there.

The exit is pretty much the point in time when I wish I had another sign that would pop up from the top of my car (written backwards so as to be read clearly in mirrors) that said "HAPPY NOW? NEARLY KILLED ME (and 4 others) AND WE'RE STILL GETTING INTO TROY AT THE SAME TIME!" ... but that would be a big sign, and it would be hard to rig a pop up mechanism. Although a real live pop-up, as opposed to internet ads would be a good twist in life.

Today on my commute, some woman, whose front bumper I COULD NOT SEE, that's how far up my but she was, swerved into the middle lane, cutting off a gentleman who honked at her and shook his fist, then tried to quickly swerve back into the left lane in front of me.... as this would have put her somewhere in the middle of my vehicle, as there was no room to cut me off, I honked. She responded by have what looked like a seizure and flipping me off. I mean all out seizure to... it looked like she was either death metal rocking or slamming her head on the steering wheel.. Well ma'am, I'm sorry for keeping up with the traffic flow and not allowing you to cut me off. Try to keep the crazy down and not cut off the poor guy behind me, who funny enough is now speeding up to not let you back in. Please don't ram his car. Also, stop shaking your head like that, no need to give yourself whiplash BEFORE your inevitable accident.

Of course, this no where near blows my mind as much as the article I read about the Bronx woman the other day. 31 year old Carmen Huertas, after have enough to put her at .1382 stuffed 7 girls aged 11-14 into a sedan (4 door, not a minivan or anything) and proceeded to drive. While driving, she even managed to ask the girls such things as "Who thinks something's gonna happen? Raise your hand. Who thinks we're gonna get into an accident?" Yeah, there's nothing like terrifying a group of young girls before you flip the car, kill one of them, break anothers legs and pretty much injury the crap out of the rest of them. And funny enough, you get to live. Please, please, please get locked up for the rest of your life.



I think everyone should have a drivers test every five years. Possibly more often, because the things that happen out there are scary. Oh yeah, and if you drive drunk, your license should just be yanked. No second chances with a good attorney, etc. etc. That shit should just be taken away for a year or so to give you time to contemplate the horrible things you might have done. Screw with your own life all you want, but when you go putting kids at risk, how do you live with yourself?