Barreling down a Michigan highway, I'm riding shotgun with Ibro Muharemovic behind the wheel. There's a semi on one side of us and a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee up ahead. I've just met Muharemovic, and it dawns on me at 65 mph that I have no idea whether he's a good driver or an accident waiting to happen.
Then I shake my head at my silliness. It doesn't matter whether he can drive. The car's doing all the work.
We're in Muharemovic's baby, a black-on-black Volkswagen Passat his employer outfitted with a plethora of cameras, computers, radars, infrared sensors, pitch and yaw sensors, motion sensors, servo motors and the like to turn it into an autonomous vehicle.
Muharemovic works for the German international tire and automotive components supply giant Continental AG, where he is technical project manager for Continental's automatic driving program. In the past year or so he's logged more than 16,000 miles of mainly hands-free and foot-free driving in Continental's prototype. It's been accident-free, too, he lets me know.
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