Sebastian Thrun – the initial head of the Google Self Driving Car Program – is running an IAmA question session over at Reddit right now.

The way it works is simple – you can ask any question and he will answer. Done!

The IAmA section on Reddit has been exploding in popularity in the last year and you can find some brilliantly candid answers. Check it out to follow it live. We will follow up with a post in 2 days with some of the best quotes.

Alissa Priddle of Detroit Free Press has followed up her great effort for day one of the Driverless Car Summit with this summary of day two.

It looks quite encouraging.

On the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:

“Human error is the critical reason for 93% of crashes,” said Maddox. “That’s an overwhelming number. We now have an opportunity to do something about it. Our goal should be crashless cars.”

For that reason, NHTSA is putting significant resources into studying and gathering data on automation, Maddox said at the summit, which was organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

The NHTSA is the most important bureaucracy to have on side and it’s nice to see them coming along.

On LIDAR – to be $250!

German supplier Ibeo will supply lidar systems for an undisclosed automaker in 2014 for about $250 per vehicle, said sales director Mario Brumm.

On naming these vehicles:

The other challenge is finding a more appealing name for self-driving cars. Over the two days of the conference, speakers denounced autonomous, semi-autonomous and driverless as negative and confusing for what they see as exciting and positive technology.

Maddox prefers “automated.” Continental’s Schumacher uses “highly automated.”

There’s also issues with roads that don’t have lane-markings:

Schumacher said Continental’s testing revealed a significant weakness. Technology that reads lane markings fails when there are no markings.

We couldn’t make it to the Driverless Car Summit butAlissa Priddle from the Detroit Free Press  did – and has written up a quick summary of many of the speakers.

On Google’s Chris Urmson:

Google has developed a fleet of self-driving cars, each decked out with about $150,000 of equipment. Google has logged 250,000 test miles, said tech lead Chris Urmson.

Urmson hopes the technology is mainstreamed sooner than the 20-year forecasts offered by some summit attendees.

“I’m trying to push it ahead,” he said, adding the hurdles are not legislation or technology, but consumer acceptance.

On Michigan Gov Rick Snyder:

Michigan has yet to pursue legislation, but Gov. Rick Snyder said he is a proponent of driverless cars as the next logical step toward efficient mobility.

“I’d be happy to look at it,” Snyder said at the two-day conference organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

*EDIT* post #150! 

Reader Mohammad P alerts us to this upcoming event in Irvine, California.

The event has been organised by the Transportation Research Board and will address some of the issues coming up in the world of vehicle automation:

This two-day workshop convenes the world’s leaders in road vehicle automation to share the state of the practice and participate in topic-specific discussion groups to identify areas requiring further research.

Futher information.

This one literally JUST came through via email so apologies for the late notice.

On Thursday, May 24, 2012 Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT; the GTMA (Geospatial-Transportation Mapping Association) is running a webinar on driverless car technology.

I’ll let them explain it:

 In 2012, Utah DOT awarded a contract to Mandli Communications to digitally collect roadway assets using the latest in mobile network technologies. The data captured under the Utah project is not only valuable in improving asset management and roadway safety; it may also help unlock the door to the autonomous vehicles of tomorrow. This GTMA sponsored webinar features Mandli President, Ray Mandli, providing an overview of the project. How will the data be collected? What technologies are involved and what quality control measures are in place to ensure accuracy? Mr. Mandli will endeavor to answer these questions. Professor John Leonard (MIT), co-director of the Ford-MIT Alliance, and James McBride, Ph.D., Technical Expert in Ford Motor Company’s Research and Advanced Engineering Department, will then discuss how the data collected under the Utah project could be enhanced to increase its value for researchers developing the first generation of autonomous vehicles. The state of Utah is a great location for collecting data for autonomous vehicle researchers. It has mountains and desert, straight and curved roads, city and urban topographies. Digital asset collection technologies have tremendous potential in improving the way states manage assets today. This webinar is designed to enhance its ability to bring us a new generation of safer and more efficient vehicles tomorrow.

Register here to be a part.

The presence of John Leonard and Jim McBride promises to be a real treat.