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In California, the sun-baked state where gridlocked freeways seem like the rule more than the exception, a future-thinking invention could halt the chronic traffic and cure a host of other auto-related ills. Yes, self-driving cars are now legal in the Golden State.

On Tuesday, during a visit to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation to allow autonomous vehicles to operate on the state’s roads. In a press release, Brown deemed the signing of the bill as “turning today’s science fiction into tomorrow’s reality.” The state is the third in the U.S. to legalize self-driving cars, following Nevada and Florida who passed similar laws earlier this year. But it’s California’s chronically congested roads that could benefit the most from the vehicles. The tools that the car uses to drive, including radar and GPS tracking, help manage traffic flow by maintaining a constant speed and can even help reduce the necessary gap between cars.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll be lounging in the backseat watching Netflix while Google does all the navigating — yet, at least. There are an incalculable number of tests that still need to be completed before Minority Report becomes reality. And the legalization means that Google will be able to conduct these tests on their home turf.

But for those worried about leaving your safety up to the computations of a microprocessor, the commonly-stated belief cited in news reports right now is that these autonomous cars might reduce the amount of accidents on the road. In January of this year, Wired magazine published an optimistic cover story trumpeting the age of the autonomous vehicle, and writer Tom Vanderbilt explained the safety reasoning after he rode in a robo-Prius:

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Traffic is the most dangerous thing that most of us ever encounter. From 2001 to 2009, American roads claimed 369,629 lives. And the culprit was not poorly lighted thoroughfares or faulty gas pedals but us—one landmark study cited “human errors” as the “definite or probable causes” of 93 percent of crashes.

Faced with the alternatives — that guy who cut us off without signaling, the mom nursing an Ambien hangover who’s drifting into the right lane, the Bluetooth jockey doing 90 mph — I welcome our new robotic Prius-driving overlords.More at http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/26/speeding-into-the-future-self-driv
ing-cars-are-now-legal-in-california/?lid=edit]
The details sound earth-shattering, sure. But just one question remains: when can you get one? Probably a decade from now, Brin predicted, according to the Associated Press. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/26/speeding-into-the-future-self-driv
ing-cars-are-now-legal-in-california/?lid=edit it's a good thing, I dunno...me, I'm just glad it's at least ten years away. Sometimes being on the cusp of things in Crazy California isn't something I admire...

Oh, wait, it's not just us!

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Google’s Driverless Cars Now Officially Licensed in Nevada http://techland.time.com/2012/05/08/googles-driverless-cars-now-offici
ally-licensed-in-nevada/

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