The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in Nevada, USA, has issued its first-ever official Autonomous Vehicle Testing number plates to a Google self-driving car.
The rego reads ∞AU001, in yellow and white characters on a bright red background.
According to the Nevada DMV, “the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future.'”
But that optimistic statement is offset in the DMV’s press release by the additional observation that “the unique red plate will be easily recognized by the public and law enforcement.”
With that in mind, perhaps an exclamation point, or !, might have been a better choice than infinity?
(Google would no doubt have objected. After all, the exclamation point is rather alarmingly known in British English as the “shriek”, and even more disturbingly in American English as the “bang”.)
Well done to Google’s engineers – even though the red colour denotes that the vehicles are still plated for testing purposes. Only when the plates are issued in green will the vehicles have been licensed for sale to and use by the public.
Sadly, Google’s autonomous vehicles aren’t yet able to renew their own registrations online.
The Nevada DMV’s rego portal doesn’t recognise the infinity symbol as a valid license plate character.
Looks as though the cars will have to renew over the phone.
This raises another interesting question.
Will Autonomous Vehicles be expected to pull over and stop before making a phone call? Or will they be allowed to delegate the call to an auxiliary processor?
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License plate, vehicle and online rego renewal images from the Nevada DMV web site.
Am I the first to suggest: by malware injection or otherwise, gaining control of an "autonomous vehicle", Google or other, and thereby causing it to crash, with a sufficient speed of impact, into one's own vehicle, as a rear-end shunt or otherwise, such that one can then lay lucrative insurance claims, possibly including those for "whiplash" to one or more passengers, against the owner of said "autonomous vehicle" or such other party as might reasonably be found liable in a court having appropriate jurisdiction?
Is there a tentative release date for Sophos AV for AVs?
Such insurance scams are hardly lucrative. Have you ever tried to pursue a VALID insurance claim? Good luck…
What happens when the self-driving vehicle has a flat? Who changes the flat tire… the vehicle?
I guess the car goes to the proper place for maintenance automatically.
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