Self-Driving Cars By 2020, Says Former GM Exec

Self-driving automobiles will be a reality by 2020, according to previous General Motors research and development chief Larry Burns. Before a crowd at the University of Michigan's Robotics Day, Burns envisioned the not-too-distant time when fleets of driverless cars will carry people wherever they need to go, then instantly travel to the next destination to serve someone else.

Less distracted driving

With driverless vehicles, people will be able to do whatever they want in the car. They could take a phone call, play a game or even do business on the trip into work. People do not have to put any time into thinking about driving the car. Distracted driving will not be an issue, and fewer crashes will come. Emissions will even decrease quite a bit, as people will have fewer, lighter automobiles in cities.

Test drives at Google

Thousands of miles have been put into driverless test automobiles on California roads. The Toyota Prius and Audi TT models were used in the experiment done by Google. Google has gotten a ton of attention for these models. The cars do a very good job of watching for dangers, looking at stop lights and staying on the road. They seem to be very effective with radar and video cameras.

Only one accident has reportedly occurred when the driverless system was active, and that appears to have been the fault of a separate, human driver. It is notable that control can be assumed by a human driver at any point during the operation of the self-driving system.

GM attempted driverless cars in 2007

In 2007, GM entered a driverless Chevrolet Tahoe in a 55-mile race sponsored by the U.S. DARPA (DARPA). The race occurred in Victorville, Calif., and the driverless system in the Tahoe (nicknamed "Boss") used familiar systems, from cameras and radar to global positioning satellites. Boss won the race, reports Automotive News.

'Cruise control on steroids'

While Burns maintains that self-driving vehicles won't be fully available until 2020, he believes that many of the necessary benefits will be available on most customer automobiles by 2015. He sees driverless systems working in tandem with adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance and lane-keeping technology to promote both passenger freedom and roadway security.

Leap for insurance

It will be harder to figure out who is at fault in accidents with the new technology. That means a massive stumbling block for the driverless automobiles will be insurance businesses.

Learn about Google's self-driving