Google's automated cars will start hitting the road in larger numbers:

On Friday, the Internet giant announced that the first autonomous vehicle it has manufactured — a squat two-seater, unveiled a year ago, with no steering wheel or brakes — will begin rolling out on public roads in northern California this summer. Urmson and his team have assembled 25 of the cars, which, for now, are just called “prototypes.” (Re/code has dubbed them “clown cars”; Google may be more partial to the “Koala car” nomenclature.) When they hit the roads, they will not exceed 25 miles per hour. And, due to current state regulations, they must be equipped with brakes, an accelerator pedal and a steering wheel.

But ultimately, Google wants to strip those out. The company’s stated goal is shepherding fleets of vehicles that can drive with no need for human intervention, a bid to curtail the time wasted in traffic and aide those unable to drive. “At that point, the steering wheel and brake pedal just don’t add value...

Later that day, Google released (incidentally, by Google’s telling) the first glimpse at numbers on its self-driving car experiment: 11 accidents during the 1.7 million miles on the road since 2009. (That puts its incident rate at more than twice the national average of 0.3 damaging incidents per 100,000 miles.) Urmson detailed the accidents: Seven came from other cars rear-ending theirs, two were freeway side-swipes and one was a silly error from a Google test driver who was using the manual controls at the time. Google insists that the higher rate comes from thorough reporting, something most human drivers ignore.

Just look at the car above.  It looks like Herbie the VW Love Bug after it's been on a starvation diet in a Vietnamese POW camp.  It's so small and lightweight that if it hits anything more substantial than a golf cart, it's going to crumple like a Coke can.  You know why they made it so light – to use less gas and protect against imaginary global warming, but at the expense of the driver's life.

Meanwhile, when they get rid of the steering wheel and brakes, the driver will be helpless if the system malfunctions.  Or freezes up.  Or becomes homicidal.  Can you imagine sitting in one of those cars, driving along, when suddenly the car speaks to you – "I'm sorry Dave, but your continued existence is only worsening global warming"...right before it drives you over the edge of a cliff?

Meanwhile, the accident rate is twice the national average.  Google called one accident a "silly error," but I don't think you'd laugh if you were in a "silly" accident.  Google also claims that other cars caused most of the other accidents, but I have another name for that – it's called stopping short.

Would you ride in one of these sardine-can death traps?

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.