Emerging Technologies Blog

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If you are a Texas resident, you probably have seen a white Lexus RX 450h, with the word 'Google' inscribed on both sides of the vehicle and two girls in it, cruising around Austin--especially in Guadalope and Epoch. And you couldn't help but asked yourself why such a car having a thing atop that spins all the time doing in your neighborhood.

Well to satisfy your curiosity, Google is testing its self-driving car in Texas, the millionaire city(because they have more money to throw around). The aim of trialing these vehicles is to put them to the test and hopefully make them available to everyone as early as 2017. Too ambitious a project right.

Not just you a lot of residents of Texas have shared photos and videos of the driverless car when it drives into their area. In fact someone said he/she saw the Google car avoid a badly parked car blocking the lane but couldn't suss out  it was in autonomous mode or being under the care of a human driver.

Now you might ask the question is it legal to test self-driving cars on public roads in Texas? Yes, even without a permit. But that is not say Google hasn't gotten one to do so. I believe you know your state too well and a company like Google. It may have gotten a permit from the Texas Department of Transportation  for the testing of its autonomous cars in public roads but just did not made it public.

Google is currently testing its driverless cars on public streets in Mountain View, California. The cars have so far been involved in 14 accidents since the search giant started its self-driving car project six years ago(2009). Though all of the accidents were not caused by the self-driving cars but human error.