It's hard to keep up with the speed at which technology is transforming society and sometimes we give the tech a bit too much credit.

Self driving cars are nothing new. Most people know that they exist and are being tested by large tech companies such as Google and Uber. When you are driving down the road and you don't see a driver behind the wheel in the car next to you, assuming you have been keeping up with the news in the technology section of the paper you may just think 'oh wow, guess self-driving cars are getting more advanced these days...'

This is what many thought was going on in Virginia recently as residents and tech blogs were fooled by a university ‘research project’ that was simply a driver pretending to be part of autonomous (self-driving) vehicle.

Unlike vehicles from Google Waymo, Uber and others, the car didn’t have any obvious signs of a Lidar array, the chunky imaging technology most autonomous vehicles use to gauge the state of the road ahead. Instead, it had just a small bar mounted on the dashboard, which blinked red when it was at a stop light and green once the cost was clear.

Even more intriguingly, the car appeared to be genuinely autonomous: there was no-one sitting in the driver’s seat. Typically, a human overseer is required in the testing phase to make sure that the car doesn’t go wild and run over a marching band, but somehow this car had managed to find a loophole.

Would you be fooled?

Take a look at this short video and then ask yourself again...

Techblogger Wrap Up

The technological advancements of this century are certainly impressive and the speed at which our society is adapting and developing these new technologies is immense. However, its also possible to have too much faith in technology and become reliant on it for things that we never needed to. Can a computer and Google truly replace a library? Can a cell phone and chat app replace the need for real human contact?

Technology can't replace the human soul and it may make our lives easier but we should ask ourselves if the task we need to complete requires it at all. People did fine without self-driving cars up until this point, is this something we really need?

Your comments and feedback are appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Sources:

''Self-driving car' actually controlled by man dressed up as a car seat ' - The Guardian

Image Source:

Business Insider