Self driving car reveals Google mindset.

If you want to know what people are thinking, its useful to look carefully at what they do.

Can this carry a sheet of plywood?

Google Inc. (GOOG) has designed its own self-driving vehicles that transport passengers at the push of a button as it aims to spread the new automotive technology, co-founder Sergey Brin said.
Working with automotive partners, the company plans to have 100 to 200 test vehicles that are fully autonomous with extra safety features, Brin said during a conference yesterday hosted by technology blog Re/code in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Google, which until now had added its technology to other vehicles, plans to start testing the prototypes with drivers this year, he said.

Why bother? SAFETY! Its for the children, you know.

Work on autonomous vehicles has gathered speed as carmakers build smarter cars that will help reduce accidents, and make driving easier and safer. In 2012, there were 1.3 million people killed in road traffic accidents, making it the ninth leading cause of death globally, according to World Health Organization data. It is the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 29.

What are they doing to  make the self-driving car safer?

Brin's announcement comes amid a push to encourage the adoption of driverless cars, which aim to make roads safer with the company's hardware and software. The two-seat prototypes, which have safety items such as additional foam at the bumper and a plastic-like windshield, are part of the company's research laboratory called Google X, which is led by Brin.
"We took a look from the ground up as to what it would be like if we had self-driving cars in the world," Brin said. "We've worked with partners in the Detroit area, Germany and California," he said without giving specifics.
The prototypes let users ask for a destination address and then drives them to it, Brin said.
The vehicles will initially have a top speed of 25 miles per hour and won't have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal or brake pedal, the Mountain View, California-based company said in a blog post.

Apparently the key to safe driving in Sergey Brin's mind is to remove any possibility of human influence and ship passengers around like spam in a can. The world would be so much better if all you stupid, mindless assholes out there would just sit down, shut up and let Sergey do the driving.

This is you in a Google car.

Sergey is the same guy who's got a record of every frickin' web click you ever made sitting on a server in Mountain View.  Talk about being taken for a ride.

Wake me up when they make self-driving mandatory. I'll post an instructable on how to give yourself manual steering and brakes using a Nintendo controller, a pair of side-cutters and some baling wire.

I got yer manual control right here, Sergey.

The Side-Cutting Phantom.

Google update: How Google got the law passed to make self-driving cars legal. Short answer, political chicanery.