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Google’s Self-Driving Car Gets Even Safer, Adds Pedestrian-Aimed Airbags

It turns out Elon Musk is not the only person considering that driving as we know it today should be banned since it’s too dangerous for human safety. Sure, Tesla Motors’ CEO was rather thinking of car accidents, but that doesn’t mean pedestrians are not also in danger. This might be the reason wht the team over at Google working on the autonomous car just patented an external airbag system.
Google's self-driving car 1 photo
Photo: Google
Hey, we are all petrolheads here, we all agree that there’s nothing better than a long summer road trip with your best friends, heading for a long deserved beach vacation. However, if we are to stay rational and non-speed-addictive we should admit that the rate of car accidents is still extremely big. Like it or not, a machine would always run better than a mistake-making human being.

Yes, but what if they don’t? Well, since we have to be prepared for that as well, we should take all the measures to prevent injuries as much as possible. So let’s assume these self-driving four-wheelers won’t hit each other since they will always know of the other cars’ track. A pedestrian would still be human, thus fallible. Therefore, Google believes that a system for external airbags and bumpers that could deploy in the event of an accident is needed.

According to Quartz, these airbags would deploy when the car senses that a collision with another vehicle is imminent. However, it won’t use the regular type of airbag, since that one is most likely causing a person to bounce off and suffer even more injures. Instead, the giant IT company is going for bumpers made out of a “visco-elastic material”. Just a wild guess, the material could be something similar to the memory-foam those perfect pillows are made of.

Is Google the first? Not really, since we know that Volvo announced a system of external airbags for side crashes almost two years ago. Will it be used in Google’s self-driving autos or it’s just a way the company is protecting their new discoveries? We’re going to have to wait to find out.
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