As Silicon Valley rushes to stake out a lead in what’s hoped to be a robust market for driverless cars, the company spun off of Google has established a clear lead — perhaps giving the competition a reason to consider focusing their efforts outside the Golden State. 

“New data on tests of self-driving car technology in California suggest that Alphabet Inc.’s efforts remain ahead of many rivals in the intensifying race to bring fully autonomous vehicles to the roads,” the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that the company’s driverless unit, Waymo, clocked nearly 640,000 miles on California roads in a 12-month span encompassing the end of 2015 and most of 2016.

Pulling ahead

The newly released figures underscored how significant of an advantage in experience and testing the Google-spawned enterprise has gained over its rivals, which now include not only the likes of Tesla and Apple but old-line auto companies like GM and Ford that have begun to move into the driverless space as well. “The data show that Waymo, the driverless car unit of Alphabet, logged 30 times more miles of testing in autonomous vehicles than all of its competitors combined last year in California,” according to Financial Times. “Its cars were also the most accurate, with human intervention needed for safety reasons only 0.2 times per thousand miles.”

“The data provide the most comprehensive snapshot yet of competing driverless car technologies, at a time when carmakers and technology companies are racing to be the first to perfect autonomous vehicles. It shows Waymo, BMW, Ford and Nissan as the most accurate systems. California is unique in the U.S. for requiring that companies testing autonomous vehicles report their miles driven and ‘disengagements’ (when a human driver has to take over the wheel) each year. In the absence of federal laws on self-driving cars, these disclosures are the only comprehensive information that allow for side-by-side comparisons between carmakers.”

Only by racking up lots of miles on the road can driverless companies accumulate enough instances of disengagement to correct and refine its programming. Human takeover, Waymo explained in its report, “[is] a natural part of the testing process that allow our engineers to expand the software’s capabilities and identify areas of improvement,” Marketwatch reported. “It marked a 50 percent increase in total autonomous miles within California compared with the prior reporting period, which was two months longer than this reporting period, it said. The number of disengagements fell 75 percent to 124 last year from 341 in 2015, Waymo said.”

Greener pastures?

Despite the flurry of activity, some in Sacramento have found cause for concern. The same absence of federal law that helped make California such a hotbed of activity brought with it a potential downside — regulatory reactions against the modest risks that the development of driverless cars can bring to streets. In fact, in a recent tiff that rattled nerves, Uber refused to apply for state permits for its self-driving vehicles, drawing a reprimand that saw the powerful ride-sharing company opt to ship its driverless fleet to welcoming Arizona. Hoping to head off a stampede, a new bill introduced by State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, “would require the DMV to immediately accept or reject an application to put a driverless car on the road,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. If passed, the legislation would clear a considerable hurdle now facing companies like Uber in California. “The regulations the DMV has proposed, by contrast, would give the agency 180 days — nearly half a year — to decide yes or no.”

Competition has geared up nationwide for the favor of driverless car companies, which especially covet urban environments where they can be free to test their vehicles in complex but reasonably controllable environments. GM President Dan Ammann told the Chicago Sun-Times, “GM is awaiting the state Legislature’s approval before it can consider testing self-driving cars here, as it does already in California, Arizona and in the Detroit area,” the paper noted. “Yet even without the legislation, GM has introduced in Chicago its Maven car-sharing service, which is envisioned as eventually operating with driverless cars for hire, and Express Drive, which lets drivers for GM’s partner Lyft rent a car at a subsidized rate. The rental program is GM’s entry into developing a network that will eventually include driverless cars.”

“Many drivers may have confused the gas and brake pedals a problem that may account for ‘the vast majority’ of the unintended acceleration incidents the agency investigated, NHTSA deputy administrator Ron Medford said at Tuesday’s NHTSA press briefing.

“‘What mostly happened was pedal misapplication where the driver stepped on the gas instead of the brake or in addition to the brake,’ Medford said.”

What quickly pointed to the likelihood that there was no real scandal? As I’ve noted before, here are the ages of the drivers involved in the incidents that led to major media coverage: 60, 61, 63, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89.

By John Seiler

The problem with public-employee unions getting collective bargaining is that they then sit on both sides of the negotiating table. “This is our opportunity to elect our own bosses,” as union leader Ronda Walen put it in an election two years ago.

If you elect your “own boss,” then it’s not surprising that your “boss” — you — is over-generous with pay and benefits because other people — the taxpayers — pick up the bill.

As public coffers dive down in bankruptcy, people around the country are reacting.

In Wisconsin, Republican Gov. Scott Walker pushed through reforms that limited government-union power. A state judge just struck down the reforms, but there will be appeals.

In California, we have on the November ballot Proposition 32, the “Paycheck Protection Initiative,” which would ban unions heisting money directly from members’ paychecks.

Also, in Michigan, voters will need to reject Proposal 2, the so-called “Protect our Jobs Amendment.” The unions are pushing it because it would, among other things, “Invalidate existing or future state or local laws that limit the ability to join unions and bargain collectively, and to negotiate and enforce collective bargaining agreements, including employees’ financial support of their labor unions. Laws may be enacted to prohibit public employees from striking.”

Basically, it would ban the Michigan Legislature from itself passing something like Walker’s reforms. Initiatives still could do so by effectively repealing Proposal 2, should it pass.

Michigan is a heavily unionized state. But its unions, unlike in most places, largely are in the private sector, especially the United Auto Workers union. The problem is not private-sector unions. If you don’t like the UAW, you don’t have to buy GM, Ford or Chrysler cars. You can buy something else.

But with government unions, you have no choice — except to move. Otherwise, if you stay put and subject yourself to their tyrannies, you become their tax slave.

Of course, the limit eventually is reached when the tax slaves’ backs start breaking from the immense load placed upon thems, which is where we are now, especially on the public pension issue.

The government-worker unions can elect their “own bosses” all they want to, but now, like in “Spartacus” (1960 movie picture above), the tax slaves are revolting.

By John Seiler

One reason the American economic “recovery” is so weak is that, when General Motors went bankrupt in 2009, President Obama stole the company’s assets from bondholders to give to the UAW union. Yes, he did steal them.

In long-established bankruptcy law in America, bondholders are the first in line to receive the assets of a bankrupt company. Obama changed that, putting the unions first. Bondholders got only about 5 percent on their invested dollars.

What that did was to weaken the value of all bonds in America, including bonds held by middle-class retirees, pension funds and mutual funds. Formerly one of the most secure investments, now nobody knows if the bonds might be de-vauled by Obama, or his successor in the Kremlin, just on a whim. American bonds now are as trustworthy as Venezuelan bonds or Albanian bonds.

The New GM also was supposed to pay back all of the $49.5 billion bailout money the taxpayers were forced to inject into it. But the Detroit News just reported:

“General Motors Co. stock fell 1.2 percent Wednesday, closing at $18.80, down $0.22, on worries about Europe — the first time the Detroit automaker’s stock has closed below $19 a share since its initial public offering.

“The Detroit automaker has seen its share price tumble by more than 52 percent since it reached a high closing price in January 2011 of $38.90, just after going public in November 2010. The company has shed more than $30 billion in market capitalization over the last 18 months, and now is worth about $29 billion….

“GM’s low stock price has prevented the Treasury from exiting the automaker. It still holds 500 million shares of stock in the company as part of its $49.5 billion bailout, or a 32 percent stake.

“It needs about $53 a share in order to break even on its GM bailout. At current prices, it would lose $17.25 billion on the bailout.

So we were totally ripped off!

And let’s not forget that Government Motors also perpetrated the flammable Chevy Volt car. For Obama and eco-freaks, it’s the future of electric cars. But each Volt sold costs taxpayers $250,000. That’s more than the price for a new Ferrari California!

What should have happened was that GM should not have been bailed out, and not forced to build the Volt. By now, the company long would have recovered under completely private ownership, saving tens of thousands of jobs instead of burning them.