



This was not an isolated occurrence. Roughly a year ago, my lab manager succumbed to a traffic accident. A distracted driver hit her Prius at more than 50 miles an hour from the side while she was driving cautiously through an intersection.

Too many people share the same fate. In 2010, the number of traffic fatalities in the United States was 32,788, according to the Department of Transportation. In recent years, nearly all states have passed laws prohibiting the use of handheld devices while driving. Nevada took a different approach. In a first for any nation, the state passed a law that legalizes texting, provided one does so in a self-driving autonomous car. This places Nevada at the forefront of innovation.



Google’s vast computing resources are crucial to our technology. Our cars memorize the road infrastructure in minute detail. They use computerized maps to determine where to drive, and to anticipate road signs, traffic lights and roadblocks long before they are visible to the human eye.

Sebastian Thrun

Our cars use specialized lasers, radar and cameras to analyze traffic at a speed faster than the human brain can process. And they leverage the cloud to share information at blazing speed.


I am confident that our self-driving cars will transform mobility. By this I mean they will affect all aspects of moving people and things around and result in a fundamentally improved infrastructure.


Self-driving cars will enable car sharing even in spread-out suburbs. A car will come to you just when you need it. And when you are done with it, the car will just drive away, so you won’t even have to look for parking.


Last but not least, self-driving cars will be good news for the millions of Americans who are blind or have brain injury, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Tens of millions of Americans are denied the privilege of operating motor vehicles today because of issues related to health or age.


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