GM and self driving cars

GM announced Sunday it would build a type of self-driving technology called Super Cruise for a 2017 model-year vehicle isn't in itself that surprising. Several automakers, including Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and Lincoln already have systems that can manage limited hands-free driving on highways, and Nissan has vowed to push for a fully autonomous car by 2020.

What's noteworthy is less what Cadillac and General Motors CEO Mary Barra said, but how: By billing it solely as a convenience feature, avoiding any suggestion that Super Cruise could make a driver safer. That's because behind the scenes, GM other automakers are concerned about the legal problems of self-driving cars and vehicle-to-vehicle tech — so much so that they have asked regulators for some kind of immunity if the industry is required to roll out devices that make decisions for the driver.

Barra said GM would offer Super Cruse on an unnamed Cadillac in 2016, likely the brand's new flagship expect to be revealed next year. She also said that the 2017 Cadillac CTS will offer a form of vehicle-to-vehicle communications, a system that lets cars exchange data to speed up traffic or warn of potential collisions, much in the way modern passenger planes do today.

"With Super Cruise, when there's a congestion alert on roads like California's Santa Monica Freeway, you can let the car take over and drive hands-free and feet-free through the worst stop and go traffic around," Barra said in a speech. "And if the mood strikes you on the high-speed road from Barstow, Calif., to Las Vegas, you can take a break from the wheel and pedals and let the car do the work."

Yet GM says the system would "increase the comfort of an attentive driver on freeways," and Barra also said Super Cruise "will keep drivers alert and engaged." That's an odd bit of phrasing — like saying your dishwasher will make you pay more attention to washing dishes — and one far less ambitious than claims from Google and other non-automakers pushing for fully autonomous vehicles that would let even blind drivers behind the wheel.