Ford's Dozing Engineers Side With Google in Full Autonomy Push
- Google, Ford doubt resting drivers can react to avoid crashes
- Self-driving cars so soothing, test engineers fall asleep
Race To Build Self-Driving Cars Accelerates
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As Ford Motor Co. has been developing self-driving cars, the U.S. automaker has started noticing a problem during test drives: Engineers monitoring the robot rides are dozing off.
Company researchers have tried to roust the engineers with bells, buzzers, warning lights, vibrating seats and shaking steering wheels. They’ve even put a second engineer in the vehicle to keep tabs on his human counterpart. No matter -- the smooth ride was just too lulling and engineers struggled to maintain “situational awareness,” said Raj Nair, Ford’s product development chief.