After approximately 500,000 miles of road tests with the Google's self-driving car, it is still unclear whether the idea of an autonomous car will work in the near future. Currently, the most optimistic estimate of a self-driving car seems to come to market is in five to 10 years' time.

In Feb. of 2008, Anthony Levandowski, a 33-year-old engineer of Google, built a self-driving pizza delivery car with a team of fellow Berkeley graduates and other engineers. After the first unmanned car had successfully driven legally on American streets, the Google co-founders, "like boys plotting a scavenger hunt," gave the self-driving car team a set of 10 100-mile itineraries. "The roads wound through every part of the Bay Area. The route starts from the leafy lanes of Menlo Park to the switchbacks of Lombard Street. The team completed all 10 in a year and a half.

Currently, the self-driving car from Google is able to slow to a crawl at night-time on a wooded road when it senses a deer walking on the shoulder.

On the other hand, although Google tries to make science fiction into reality GM, meanwhile, is taking pains not to promise the moon but by 2018, it says its Cadillac will offer Super Cruise, "capable of semi-automated driving" on the freeway and in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

According to GM, "Driver attention will be required," which means drivers won't be able to read or take a nap while the car does the work. Certainly, this does not sound nearly as cool as Google's self-driving car but GM is the one who earned a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award that recognises "the innovators and products that have advanced the fields of technology, medicine, space exploration, automotive design, and more."

"Right now it appears GM is likely to be the first to market with a real-world vehicle," said by Jim Meigs, the Popular Mechanics Editor-in-Chief. "Super Cruise doesn't claim to offer fully autonomous operation, and the fact is, our legal and physical infrastructures aren't ready for that anyway."

Although the technology for self-driving cars already exists, the real question is how to make sure they are safe.

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