VOA常速英语:Driverless Buses Take to Some Roads in California

Curiosity got the best of the Dupins, they had to get on board.“I want to get one for my house just take as a mail bus.”
杜宾斯夫妇的好奇心战胜了一切，他们一定要上车。我想给家里来一辆，即使只是开着它去取信。

It’s a shuttle bus with doors and seats, but no brake pedal or steering wheel or driver.A thrilling experience for someone who just moved to California from the car capital of the US, Detroit Michigan.“I love adventure, so if something were to go wrong, it probably more interesting.”“I would right in it, yeah, for sure, I don’t think it goes very fast, does it?”
这是一辆往返班车，有车门和座位，但是没有刹车踏板，也没有方向盘，没有司机。这对才从美国汽车之都密西根州底特律市搬到加利福尼亚州的杜宾夫妇来说，是一次惊险的体验。我爱冒险，所以如果有什么差错的话，只可能会更有意思。我会坐的，肯定会，车不会开很快的，对吧？

Let’s take a ride and see.The shuttles can go about 16 km with GPS unmanned navigation on an electric battery-powered motor.
一起坐车试一下就知道了。班车在GPS无人导航系统的引导下，以电池驱动的马达为动力，时速可达约16公里。

It’s a smooth ride but jarring for the brain, since the landscape moves but no one drives.The Bishop Ranch Business Park wants to have 20 of these in ten years.The driverless vehicles will carry 12 commuters to 600 individual offices.They’ll replace these gasoline-powered buses.
车子行驶平稳，但是乘客的大脑一时间还无法协调这样的状况，因为车窗外的景色在动，可是车内无人驾驶。比夏工业园希望十年后能拥有20辆这样的车。这些无人车可以把12名上班族送往600个不同的办公地点。它们将会代替这些燃油动力班车。

“We don’t have enough resources to widen our public rider ways, or to improve them in such a way that we can get that kind of efficiency.So autonomy is the real answer for congestion, particularly on our freeways.”
我们没有足够的资源来拓宽我们的公共用地或者把它的利用效率改善到这样的程度，所以自动化是解决拥堵特别是高速公路拥堵的答案。

The buses built by a French company cost a quarter of a million dollars each.The shuttle is equipped with numerous sensors giving it 360 degree vision, so that when something walks in front of the shuttle, it stops.
这些车子是由一家法国公司制造的，每辆车价值25万美元。无人车配备大量传感器，从而具有360度的视野，如果有东西从车前走过，车会停下来。

“It’s like a radar, so it detects all the objects and about a 200 meter radius on top, and it’s got sensors in all four corners of the vehicle there, and then it also has sensors in the front.And that windshield wiper that you see in the back is not for the windshield, it’s too small, it’s for that camera.”
它就像个雷达，在顶部能侦测到200米半径内的所有物体，车的四个角和前方都有传感器，你看到的后面那个挡风玻璃刮水器其实不是为挡风玻璃设置的，它很小，是为摄像头设置的。

Randy Iwasaki who led the regulatory effort to get the shuttles says, the bus has one more hurdle to pass before the public can actually take a ride.Organizers say success will be realized when people get on and looked down at their cell phones, treating a driverless shuttle just like a normal ride.
带领监管部门努力的兰迪说，这些班车进驻园区之前还要再通过一道监管审查，才能让公众真正乘坐。主办方说，当人们乘坐无人驾驶车时不再担心，就跟坐正常巴士一样低头看起手机时，才是真正实现成功。

Carolyn Presutti VOA News San Ramon California
VOA记者加利福尼亚州圣拉蒙市。