Last week, we wrote about driverless car testing coming to California’s public roads this September 16th. Part of the approved legislation is this language:

A manufacturer shall not permit any of its autonomous vehicles to be operated on public roads in California when the operator is not seated in the vehicle’s driver seat and either: monitoring its operations and able to take over physical control of the vehicle; or, in physical control of the vehicle.

Google just released a video of their driverless car concept, tested for the first time with people outside of Google. The video is clearly a marketing piece, a bit treacly-sweet for my taste, but worth watching anyway, if only to see how far this project has come.

One thing that struck me was the lack of any form of physical override. No steering wheel, no brake pedal. Obviously, these things won’t be necessary in a driverless car, but it seems to me, this car does not meet the requirement for an operator to be able to “take over physical control of the vehicle”. Just an observation.

Personally, I would love to test drive one of these babies. The whole idea of a self-driving car fascinates me. But I think the path to driverless cars will be bumpy and, until all the bugs are worked out, absolutely requires a steering wheel and brake.