Google's self-driving cars are programmed in such a manner that they are capable of overspeeding deliberately.
However, overspeeding by the autonomous cars should not be a cause for concern as this will only happen when it is essential to keep the passengers safe.
Dmitri Dolgov, lead engineer of Google's driverless car project, revealed to Reuters that the cars are intentionally programmed to overshoot the speed limitations in certain situations.
Dolgov revealed that studies have shown that sticking to the speed limit even when other vehicles are traveling faster can be dangerous. Therefore, autonomous cars need to travel faster and follow the "keeping up with traffic" principle to decrease the risk of colliding with other vehicles.
Keeping this theory in mind, when traffic conditions are permissive, the self-driving Google cars will travel faster than the legal limit, but only by an additional 10 miles per hour at maximum.
Google and other supporters of the theory believe that self-driving cars will not only be able to bring down congestion, but also improve road safety in the long term.
"Thousands and thousands of people are killed in car accidents every year," said Dolgov. "This could change that."
For the uninitiated, Google debuted its driverless cars (aka self-driving or autonomous cars) in 2010. However, the company had been working on the program under wraps since 2009. The self-driving cars are a part of the "Google X" division and the project is supervised by co-founder Sergey Brin.
Five years have lapsed since the start of the project and the self-driving cars from Google are not ready for a release yet. However, come Jan. 2015, the vehicles have been given a green signal for testing on public roads in the UK. The testing of the self-driving cars, however, will be limited to three UK cities, which are yet to be named.
Whether the overspeeding ability of the autonomous Google cars will wreak havoc or be a blessing in the future is anybody's guess.
