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12 Amazing New Technologies To Check Out This Year
Chris Urmson, lobbyist for, and director of, Google’s Self-driving Car division, will soon be lobbying senators for federal help in getting driver-less cars to the public market. He is expected to pitch to the Senate Commerce Committee that the technology will improve safety, and cut costs for roads, trains and buses with the notion that robot cars will save us from ourselves. But will they?
The president seems to think so, as he offered $4 billion of tax-payer money to help fund the project, and the U.S. Transportation Department tends to agree, saying that automated vehicles would be able to drive closer together which would allow for more cars on the road and higher speeds without the risk of human error. Plus, congestion would be decreased due to the fact that each car can be GPS’d to a server to look for open parking spaces.
However, a few skeptics wonder if this new invention would make congestion better or worse. The fad of having a self-driving car may deter people from using public transportation and there may inevitably be more independent cars on the road.
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