Do not be taken for a ride: there are no self-driving cars yet
A MERCEDES-Benz magazine advert recently described a new sedan as a "self-driving car from a very self-driven company". On TV, the Daimler luxury brand showed a prototype autonomous car with passengers facing one another before cutting to a current vehicle with limited automatic steering."Is the world truly ready for a vehicle that can drive itself?" asked the TV advert’s narrator, adding that the future had arrived, ready or not, with a "concept car that is already a reality".But there was a problem: the E-Class sedan both adverts portrayed was not a self-driving car. Rather, it featured technologies such as "drive pilot", which can initiate a lane change by activating the turn signal, and "active brake assist", which warns of an imminent collision and automatically brakes if the driver fails to act.Mercedes-Benz pulled the TV advert in late July in part to "avoid any potential confusion", a company spokesperson said. The move came soon after consumer advocates wrote to the head of...
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