Flor
Thanks for posting this story.  

While I don't wish to burst anyone's buble or hopes, I seriously doubt 
that this approach to driving, if it proves implementable in the near 
term, will mean little to the blind.  The goals of the developers have 
nothing to do with this hope; and the cost of such equipped vehicles will 
prove insurmountable for the typical blind consumer.

Right now, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world have far more 
critical issues to deal with and resolve than automated driving cars.  

And even if the technology can be proven viable, there are a set of issues 
that go far beyond viability when it comes to actually having these cars 
travel roadways with drivers behind the wheel, say nothing of drivers not 
qualified or able to handle these cars in an instance when things fail.

Dan cites his concerns about typical drivers; well, I'd be even more 
worried by non-attentioning paying drivers who will tangentially have to 
take responsibility in the event of failure.
And even if we can get beyond this based on years of actual road 
experience of these cars, I doubt that allowing just anyone to operate an 
automated vehicle is in the realm of expectation at least in this time and 
place.
The story Flor posts should serve us as a reminder that technology, in all 
its wonders, still can require human oversight and intervention upon 
occasion.
Eliminating that oversight will not happen until years, and perhaps 
decades, have passed showing that humans are not necessary in the 
equation.

And with our current economic situation, there are not going to be funds 
available for this kind of playing around.  Those days may well be over 
given the deficit 
the President and Congress have saddled us with.  
While Harry seems to dismiss the insurance comapny issues, I cannot see, 
in the short-term, them allowing just anyone to purchase coverage.  The 
responsibility for operating the vehicle must remain with the individual 
in the driver's seat; and they are hardly going to insure someone 
incapable of instantaneously overriding the automated systems when things 
will go awry.

I see a place for such vehicles potentially; but that place, at least for 
the near term, is not with blind "drivers." 

That may ultimately come, but that is a long way off.

Sorry but that just doesn't seem reasonable to me.








The real measure of our wealth is how much we should be worth if we lost our money.
John Henry Jowett - (1864-1923), English Congregational pastor


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