Current Driverless Car Technology

One of the main impetuses behind the call for driverless cars is safety. Because driver inattention and driver error cause so many accidents each year, it's natural for carmakers to focus their efforts on systems that can make cars safe, even if drivers aren't. There's a continuum of these "driverless" systems -- some don't seem driverless at all, and others are on par with science fiction cars.

One of the driverless systems that you may not have realized was driverless is anti-lock brakes. Sounds surprising, doesn't it? After all, anti-lock brakes need the driver in order to work. Still, they represent one end of the driverless continuum because anti-lock brakes perform a function that drivers used to have to do themselves. When a car is braking hard and doesn't have anti-lock brakes, the wheels can lock up, sending the car into an out-of-control skid. In a car without anti-lock brakes, the driver has to pump the brake pedal to keep the wheels from locking up. With anti-lock brakes, the system does the pumping for the driver -- and does it better than the driver. The system can read the wheels and knows when they are about to lock and react faster and with a more appropriate response than a driver could. Anti-lock brakes are one of the first technologies that take cars in a driverless direction.