Baidu's driverless car: Scary stuff for a control freak

I don't, for example, enjoy riding in cars driven by other people. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled when Chinese tech giant Baidu (BIDU, Tech30) offered me a chance to ride shotgun in a car driven by a computer. But I was able to put my unease aside, for journalism's sake, and agreed to take Baidu's new driverless car for a spin in Wuzhen, a city located roughly 130 kilometers west of Shanghai. The car is called Yun Xiao, or "Cloud Ride," and it doesn't look like much. It appears to be a very typical sedan, in fact, until you notice the Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) device perched on its roof.