Toot toot: The politely honking driverless car is here

Google has revealed that its self-driving cars don't just know how to change lanes and run yellow lights -- now, they can even honk the horn like a regular human. As the company's test cars trundle around on public roads, Google has begun training its computers to rely on the horn in specific scenarios, such as when another driver is backing out of a space and can't see that Google's vehicle is approaching. At other times, it'll honk when another driver starts edging into the occupied lane. The company is only just beginning to roll out this feature after testing the horn inside the car itself; engineers didn't want the vehicle to blast away at other people unnecessarily or by mistake. So when the car accidentally honked at someone during testing, only the Googlers on the inside could hear it and correct for it by teaching the computer that that wasn't an appropriate time to honk.