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Warning; Super Long Answer: About 3300 words. Read only if interested and if you have the time and patience.Question: What influenced and inspired your choice of career.Answer:I can’t put my finger on what exactly it was.I did not plan anything initially. My career was guided by fate/luck/circumstances and my own tendency to allow myself to drift and trust my luck to carry me to the best destination.Here is a mini autobiography:I passed my matriculation exam in 1966 from a good English medium school with Distinction. My favourite subject was English. I loved writing and my essays in school were hand-picked by my English teacher and read out to the entire class. I toyed with the idea of doing BA (journalism) and joining Times of India, my favourite newspaper at the time but my mother's shocked looks and my friends ridiculing me made me drop the idea like a hot potato."Arts? Yuck! Those courses are for girls whiling away their time before getting married! Do you want to end up teaching English in the same school! Be a man! Blah blah blah"Under peer pressure and also parental guidance, I chose to do science at a fancied college (Elphinstone College in Mumbai) and spent an entire year postponing my career decision. I had several options open and was glad to simply bide my time.IIT was the buzz word then.Everyone was busy preparing for it. Coaching classes were having a field day. I did not attend any, but went for a crash one month course at the end just for getting that extra confidence.I believe that I had done well in the entrance exam but it was not good enough. I did not make it.My mom was determined to make me an engineer. Middle class families those days, never looked beyond CA/Medicine/Engineering. They of course preferred an IAS but they realized that the number of selected candidates was very few and the competition was from all over the country from students of all disciplines and felt that CA/Medicine/Engineering was a safer option to try.Having missed IIT, I tried for the "next best" option. I applied to a few regional engineering colleges (now called NITs) and also BITS Pilani.At REC Trichy I was offered Electrical Engineering and at BITS Pilani, where I just made it, I was offered the least fancied branch that is Civil Engineering.Tamil nadu was ablaze at that time The anti-Hindi agitation was in full swing. Stations were being burnt. Hindi signboards were being defaced. Colleges were closed. So I chose Bits Pilani.My mom and dad would have none of that. They wanted a 'Chemical Engineer' Son not a Civil engineer messing around with Sand and cement!I consoled them and told them (just to placate them and allow me to go to Pilani) that the course was of five years and the first two years was common to all and that I would do well and seek a change to a better branch in the third year when we would start our actual studies in the allotted branch of engineering)Reluctantly they let me go. I joined BITS Pilani in July 1967 after hearing a lot about the reputation of BITS and once I arrived there, I fell in love with the campus, hostel life and the facilities for extra curricular activities and the curriculum. One humanities subject was compulsory for all engineers each year and I chose to do courses in English and Advanced English, Indian history and culture, Public administration, Economics, and Industrial Psychology as electives in addition to my engineering subjects. This was a bold innovation by BITS Pilani at that time. No other college had this system in place.It was supposed to produce a "well rounded" personality and not a human automaton.My parents kept asking about my progress in getting a branch change. I kept stalling. I loved my life there at Pilani so much that I was becoming indifferent to what my major was. I then told them in my third year that I could not get my branch changed and I was liking my subject and would continue. They were disappointed but they left me in peace after that.I passed with distinction in Civil Engineering as my major, and also enjoyed a cosmopolitan Campus life, made many friends, improved my spoken Hindi, and got exposure to life in North India after 17 years of childhood and boyhood in Mumbai.In 1972, I came back to Mumbai and was offered two jobs. One was a poorly paid job as a sub editor for a technical magazine (Indian Concrete Journal) and another was for a Road Construction company as a supervisor. I rejected both. While waiting for better opportunities, I thought seriously about post-graduation. I had not had my fill of campus life. There was no Gate exam then and I was selected by University of Roorkee (now called IIT Roorkee) for a two year master's programme in Structures.I proceeded to Roorkee and was soon armed with a Master's degree in Structural engineering after another happy two- year stay in the Roorkee University campus. This time my morale was better. My scholarship (Rs 250 per month) enabled me not to depend on any remittances from parents. It was enough to meet my needs.What next? Everyone was appearing for all sorts of competitive entrance exams. Upsc, Hindusthan Steel Ltd and others, Services Selection Board etc. I appeared for the entrance exam conducted by HSL and passed with flying colours. They selected me for a company called MECON which was the new name for HSL's Central Engineering and Design Bureau and later launched as an independent company called Mecon, head quartered at Ranchi and reporting to the ministry of Steel and Mines. It was perhaps the largest consultancy organization in the country with about 2600 engineers of all disciplines and specialized in consultancy services for the Steel plant projects which were valued at several hundred crores of rupees.This happened on its own. I had no hand except to apply, pass the exam and wait. I simply accepted what came to me. Those days, jobs were scarce unlike today.They posted me at Bokaro Steel plant and my posting lasted 2 months. It was supposed to be an exposure to the steel plant structures. Mecon had opened a new office at Bangalore and after the training period, I was asked to march to Bangalore and report at this new office. This was in Oct 1974.So my arrival at Bangalore was not planned but simply fated.At Bangalore, without offering me any choice I was posted in the Structural section which dealt with total consultancy services for steel structures for Heavy Industrial Buildings. I joined at the junior-most Executive level as a Graduate Engineer Trainee and worked my way up and was involved in Analysis, Design, Drawings, Technical Specifications, Tender Scrutiny, Project Reports, Software development, Inspection and site supervision of Steel structures for Industrial Buildings, Commercial buildings and also Defense Establishments.I served for 28 long years and the last 6 years were as head of the same department that I had joined as a trainee in 1974.Those were the best years of my professional life. There was high job satisfaction and the kind of projects I was involved in were the envy of my friends. The pay was moderate but not bad. Considering that my wife worked in a bank, we had enough to lead a decent life. I could save well, educate my children well and also invest in a house in Bangalore and own a two wheeler and later a car. Life was smooth and incident free, job security was ensured. I got to tour extensively in India and was also sent on short postings to some places abroad including places like Korea and Finland.My lack of any planning for my career had in no way affected me.God had taken care of me till then.But….Nothing is permanent. In the late nineties, the company was facing bad times.Our core competence was no longer in demand. The steel Industry was going through a recession. We started accepting jobs from other sectors which paid a lot less and for which we were not suitable at all because our overheads were heavy.We started doing distasteful jobs at fees that were less than our expenditure simply to cut losses. To save money, perquisites were cut. Facilities taken for granted earlier like LTC, hotel and travel accommodation entitlements, loans for house building, cars medical and hospitalisation expense reimbursements, etc were all held in abeyance or reduced. I was no longer enjoying any job satisfaction. I had outgrown technical design work after being promoted to the position of Deputy General Manager and was saddled with administrative and non technical responsibilities.I was unhappy. After all these years, going to the office in the morning was a torture.From out of the blue the government introduced VRS . (Voluntary Retirement Scheme). I was the first to apply along with several colleagues. The company accepted the applications of many of them but sat on my application for a whole year and finally refused to release me but they would not put it in writing.The details are tedious to relate here but it finally ended in my submitting my resignation at the age of 50. I had 8 more years of productive service still left and had to forgo a lot of retirement benefits.Okay, till now, God planned for me.Now I had to plan for myself!During my service I had been receiving several offers from Head Hunters and HR consultants to leave my company and join the private sector. I had been spurning them.I now decided there was nothing to lose and accepted an offer from a new Management and software consultancy company, as the GM of a newly created division that was being set up to capitalize on a new business opportunity that had opened up in India consequent to the advent of the internet.This was Knowledge process outsourcing/ Business process outsourcing.The internet made it possible for many US companies to get many kinds of work done in India at low man-hour costs and delivered over the net. Medical transcription was among the earliest of these new businesses.Soon American Steel fabricators, Architects, and contractors found it expedient to off load their drawing preparation work, and other time consuming and laborious works to India where man hour cost was 1/7th of what it was in USA. After a few initial hiccups, the parent company in USA and the back end center in India would soon establish an equilibrium and the business flourished.I was taken on as GM and posted at Electronics City in Bangalore and I set up a team of 8 engineers and 22 draftsmen and headed this department and worked on this new business for 2 and half years and got a thorough exposure to this business, and its pitfalls, loopholes, sources for bagging assignments, quoting correct prices for executing assignments etc. how to chase payments, identify poor paymasters, good companies that pay on time, the tools, resources and software needed and the optimum manpower needed to run the business for a particular turnover and how to word a contract agreement fairly and safely, what kind of projects to avoid, however tempting the price, and what kind of projects to accept even if it meant compromising on our price, what kind of time schedule was feasible and which to turn down because it was not feasible.The work was of course not creative. That part was retained by the US Client. They offloaded only the grunt work, which took 90 percent of the time, to us, to keep their costs down. They paid us just half the price they would have to pay in America to get the job done there. We charged at least twice the price that we would have charged Indian customers for equivalent assignments in India. This was win-win situation for both. The time difference, around 12 hours made it possible to keep the project going on round the clock. We contacted each other on Yahoo/Microsoft messenger and later Skype in the mornings and evenings and there was heavy traffic in Emails, uploading and downloading of drawings and documents.They paid me twice of what I was getting in Mecon. But the working hours were long. I was constantly required to be online and in emergencies I would be asked to be available even at unearthly hours like 2:30 am!As I said before nothing is permanent. In this case too, the business soured after some time. Other companies too jumped in and the competition was so intense that our prices had to be reduced. Overhead costs rose, since this was an ISO company. Cost cutting, salary delays, extended working hours for the same salary contributed to mass resignations and I was left to find solutions. My requests for additional software licenses, better hardware, and new software that could greatly improve productivity were all turned down. After two and half years I realized that this business could not operate much longer with so much of overheads and restrictive procedures due to our being an ISO certified company.The time had come to plan my own career move. I believed I still had about 10 years of ability to work in me. I was in reasonably good health.I offered my resignation and decided that I would get into this business for myself, and not work for any one.This two and half year stint had given me an excellent exposure and I was brimming with confidence and simply raring to go.What was re-assuring was that I was at an age when all my debts were cleared. The house and car had been paid for. My daughter was married and settled in Usa. My son was in college with his career plans all chalked out and any funds he might need were kept safe and secure and reserved for him. My wife had opted for VRS from her bank and she offered to help me.I took the plunge.After all these years of contacts with American customers, I had a few who trusted me implicitly and they gave me small jobs initially and later larger and more ambitious assignments after I had convinced them that I was equipped with staff and software resources for handling them.Two trusted senior staff from the previous company I worked for did not want to continue there, after I left and resigned to throw in their lot with me. We recruited 12 new hands, fresh from college at salaries 10 percent more than what the open market was paying to freshers at that time. I initially rented office space close to my house while I modified my 2000 square feet house and demolished internal walls, and built an additional small hall on what was previously my terrace and soon set up an office in my own house and shifted my staff to my house. I moved my family to my newly purchased apartment a short distance away.At last! I was an entrepreneur! I gave jobs to others. I did not apply for jobs anymore! I was my own boss something I had not dreamt about a few years ago.The business ran well till 2008. I cleared all the loans I had taken for setting up the business and for buying hardware(19 personal computers, and two laptops) Software (8 Autocad licenses and 6 Tekla licenses) and two MS office licences and all the standard office furniture and fittings.Income had stabilized. I bought one more apartment as an investment and rented it out. I paid myself a decent salary starting with the salary I resigned on and soon drawing twice the salary. I enjoyed the luxury of having a driver and a live in maid at home and got my wife on board as a Co Director and paid her a salary and got all my non technical work done by her (like HR, recruitment, accounts, administration, supervising cleaning , purchase of office requirements and acting as counsellor for the employees most of whom were girls in their twenties. She also handled all contacts with my auditors and took care of paying all the taxes and handling payroll, leaving me free to concentrate on project execution, quality control and delivery on schedule and also training the newly recruited staff.My plans seemed to be working.My venture had stabilized. I was free from liabilities. I was feeling like a pilot who had finished the pre-flight formalities and had slowly piloted the plane till the end of the runway and had turned around was preparing for a take off and then soaring over the skies!Then Fate came back to taunt me!The 2008 sub-prime crisis in USA struck suddenly!My one fundamental mistake in marketing policy which was always haunting me at the back of my mind and which I had been ignoring finally caught up with me. This mistake was putting all my eggs in the American basket. I never pursued Indian Clients, or Australian clients. Indian clients paid far less but work during difficult times was assured. I did not pursue Australian clients since they paid far less than the Americans and they asked for more work and my team was less familiar with their codes of practice and were completely at home with the American specs and codes.The sub-prime crises in USA brought several projects to a halt. The Construction Industry in USA was seriously affected. My clients frantically called to cancel contracts. Some paid a token amount for work already done as compensation. Others did not pay at all and said they would pay if they were paid by their customer who pleaded that he would pay when the bank released the funds for the project. I was left dangling at the bottom of the food chain. I could not tell my staff that I would pay their salaries only if I got paid. I kept the boat sailing somehow by putting in some of my own emergency funds but I realized it was a losing battle. The crisis, I knew would last at least two years, may be even more, and I did not have the capability to rough it out unless I was willing to pledge all my immovable property assets. My wife firmly vetoed that idea.Then another personal disaster struck me for which I was totally unprepared. A sudden heart attack followed by angioplasty, then severe internal bleeding due to drugs taken post angioplasty which caused me to fall unconscious, and be rushed back to the ICU, followed by a severe attack of some strange kind of arthritis which kept me in bed for six months, totally unable to walk, all hit me in quick succession between 2010 and 2011 and I knew I was licked!A good Samaritan turned up in the nick of time. He was a big entrepreneur running a bigger business with a greater turnover in Andhra Pradesh. He sold his business and moved to Bangalore and wanted to do something smaller. He sought me out through mutual contacts and bought out my company at Par. I was glad to offer it to him. This happened in 2011 and fate has been kind to me after that!I am now leading a quiet retired life. I help my old organization when they invite me to conduct campus interviews for recruitment and for conducting orientation training of the new recruits. I divide my time between living in USA and Bangalore.Regards and best wishes to all Quorans and thank you for your patience in reading this long story.GV

Warning: This response includes a limited amount of cursing.“Tipton Traffic, N5512Q (his tail number was published in the news) Engine out, Tipton.” I heard over the radio as I sat at the operations desk at Tipton Airfield, in Ft. Meade, MD (actually just south of Ft. George G. Meade’s “wire”) on November 22, 2015. Ironically, I had been typing a Quora Answer trying to convince a user that flying was safe; that she had nothing to fear (I have yet to actually submit that answer.)I walked over to the radio, “12Q (the last three digits of a plane’s tail number can be used to identify it if no two planes share the same digits,) Tipton Unicom, say again?”No response.With a slightly more concerned voice, I said, “12Q, Tipton Unicom, please confirm engine out.”Nothing. The pilot was doing as he should, prioritizing flying the aircraft over communicating.Through my office window, I saw the Mooney M60E that was N5512Q coming in with the wind on his tail (usually, you’d land into the wind so as to have more air over the wings with a lower speed relative to the ground.) Cue, a strong, very unfortunate gust of wind with 12Q less than 20′ off the ground.His right wingtip impacted the ground first. Going at least 70KIAS, the aircraft careened about 350′, spinning down the runway, with his wingtips acting as his landing gear and his landing gear acting more like dead weight. He stopped just short of the PAPI (precision approach path indicator) lights and the 6.8 amp, 500V live wires powering it.Somehow, he didn’t cartwheel. That would have been an instant death sentence. The fuel tanks would have ruptured and the 100 octane leaded Avgas inside ignited in a relatively large conflagration.“Oh, shit!,” I yelled out loud despite being the only person in the FBO at the time.I don’t remember freezing. I took two steps back to my desk and called 911.“Anne Arundel County 911, what’s your emergency?”“I just had a plane crash at Tipton Airfield, 7515 General Aviation Dr., Ft. Meade, MD 20755.”“You had WHAT?”“A plane just crashed.”“Roger, what do you need?”“I need an ambulance and a fire truck.”“Is the plane on fire?”“As far as I can tell, no, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. It full of 100 octane fuel. (I knew this because I had seen the guy 30 minutes before filling up.)“You can’t tell? Where are you?”“About 350 yards from the plane sitting in the FBO.” said I, now with an impatient sounding voice.“The fire department is on their way. They should be there in 5–10 minutes.”(Tipton is a small airport. Our “fire house” is a storage shed and our “fire department” is non-existent. The FAA does not require us to have one nor could we afford to have one.)As a member of the Civil Air Patrol, I had been trained to not endanger my safety in a rescue attempt. The first thing you are taught is “Don’t become the mission;) don’t make us have to save you, too. Yes, its cold, but so is life. An explosion doesn’t give a damn about the fact you were trying to save a life.Even if I was trained to endanger my safety, there would have been nothing I could do. The crash was violent. I fully believed the pilot had suffered a spinal injury. I may have first aid certification, but that does not cover spinal injuries. You are taught to leave them in place and let paramedics/ fire fighters extricate the victim from the wreak.Fortunately, we have two Medstar Health helicopters based on the field. Unfortunately, they, and their paramedics, were both airborne responding to other emergencies.I hung up the phone and ended the 911 call. I waited about three seconds for the call to disconnect before picking the phone back up and calling Leesburg Flight Service Station (FSS) in Leesburg, VA to file a NOTAM (NOtice To AirMen) to close the runway.“Lockheed Martin (they operate most if not all FSS’s) Flight Service, (I’ve since forgotten his name,) how may I help you?”“Hi, this is Ryan Payne at Tipton. I need to post a NOTAM to close runway 10/28 due to an aircraft crash.”“How long is it going to be closed for?” (He’s required to ask this in order to file the NOTAM.)“I don’t know. Indefinitely. I’ll call you back to cancel it.”“I need an expiration date and time, sir.”“December 1st at 1300Z.” (The “Z” means zulu time, or, in layman’s terms, UTC. Approximately 8AM local time.) The date and time were random, we could always push the expiration date back if needed. I just wanted to give us more than enough time to resolve the situation.While I was on the phone with 911 and Leesburg, the aviation departments of both Anne Arundel County and Howard County police departments, both located in Hangar 84, hopped in their cars and floored it to the crash site.After getting off the phone with Leesburg, I walked outside to get a better view of the crash site to look for flames, the pilot, ect. It had been six minutes since impact.I walked out to shut off the 100LL Avgas tank. After all, we didn’t know if fuel quality was to blame for the crash. And we didn’t want to find out the hard way.I pulled out my cell phone and called the Operations Manager (they are both off on the weekends, only operations support agents such as myself are present on the weekends. Even then, its only one of us on duty at any time.)“Hey, C—- (operations manager, name withheld,) we just had a crash.”“WHAT!?!”“N5512Q just crashed. Fire department’s on the way.”“Alright, just keep people away from the crash site.”“Wilco.” (Aviation/ military/ radio/ abbreviation for “will comply.”)“I’ll be there soon. Did you call M—-?” (the airport manager, name withheld.)“Not yet, but I will.”“Alright, see you in a bit.”Then I heard the sirens.“Bye.”The vehicle gate between General Aviation Drive and the ramp and runway were still closed. And the fire department didn’t have a gate key.Nor did I.There is a way to quickly open powered gates and keep them open without a gate key. Let’s just say I know how and I’m not about to tell.I sprinted to and opened the gates and stood just outside them while I waited for the fire trucks to turn onto General Aviation drive. As they drove towards the FBO, I waved to get their attention. The gate is about 125 yards past the FBO parking lot.They pulled up to where I was standing and asked where the plane was. I pointed to it on, or rather, just off, the runway.“Right there.”, I yelled over the noise coming from the truck’s engine.“Is the runway closed?”“Yes, sir.”With those words, they pulled onto the ramp with the ambulance in tow and drove out to the plane.With trained professionals (the fire department) on scene, I began to calm down. I shut the gate behind them and “locked” it so as to return it to normal operation. (There is a pressure sensor on the ramp side of the gate that allows vehicles to drive out without a key.)I walked back to the FBO to grab my coat, gloves, and hat. It was the end of November, the week before Thanksgiving. It was COLD, and I wanted some warmth. (You’ll realize very quickly if you spend any amount of time at an airport that they are never comfortable. They are either baking hot with high humidity or freezing cold with strong winds.)I hopped into the operation’s truck and pulled up to the gate. At the time, we had state police cars flooding onto the airport to investigate. And the gate was locked. And they didn’t have keys. I hopped into the truck so I could trip the gate’s pressure sensor from the comfort of a heated cabin, allowing them to pull through.We probably had 12 Maryland State Police and eight Anne Arundel County police cars on the field at one point, not counting those belonging to the aviation departments . It must have been an otherwise slow day in the area.The general manager arrived first and motioned for me to open my window.“Have you been over there yet?” he said.“No. I’m not trained to do anything that could help and thought it would be best to stay out of their way.”“Okay. In the future, remember, when C and I aren’t around, you represent the airport. Follow me.”I followed him onto the runway and parked the truck towards the back of the group of cop cars. We had the cop cars, two fire trucks, and ambulance, my manager’s SUV, the operations truck, and one wreaked M60E sitting about 75–100 feet south of the runway.My manager started talking to this one guy. He wasn't in a uniform, but I recognized him. He had been in the FBO 45 minutes before the crash to buy oil. He was the pilot, the sole occupant of the aircraft during the crash.Amazingly, he not only survived, but was walking.I had thought that we would have a coroner show up at the airport to collect his body.Somewhat more optimistically, I thought we would have to have Med Star or some other Medevac company airlift him to the hospital. But no. He was perfectly fine.Any landing you can walk away from, right?The paramedics tried to convince him to go to the hospital to get checked out. He refused, likely because he was afraid they would find something that would ground him for life. Frankly, I can’t say I blame him. The FAA can be ass backwards when it comes to medicine sometimes.At this point, the fire department had declared the scene safe and left.You could tell he was in a state of psychological shock. N5512Q was his first plane, a nice plane. A plane he had paid over $60,000 for. ($60,000 being the average cost for an M60E.) A plane he had lost in an accident that almost claimed his life as well.And now it was merely scrap metal.After awhile, C arrived and told me to grab the camera, a Cannon DSLR, out of the Ops office closet and take pictures of the crash site.The cops documented the scene, taking pictures and measuring distances, before leaving. The right wing was bent upwards at least a 30 degree angle. Ditto for the horizontal stabilizer. The propeller tips were bent backwards at a 90 degree angle. There were holes in the wing caused by pieces of the airframe puncturing the skin. The engine had seized, which would have required an expensive overhaul if not complete replacement. His left main gear had collapsed back into the wheel well. His right main gear had pushed up into and through the wing, the top of its shock sticking out. The nose gear was 150′ behind the plane. At least the tanks weren't leaking.While the cops were documenting the scene, I tuned the handheld radio I had on my hip to 121.500MHz and heard the familiar sound of an ELT (emergency location transmitter) going off as designed. The ELT was sending GPS coordinates up to a USAF satellite. If he had crashed off field, these coordinates would have been routed to the USAF RCC (USAF rescue coordination center) in Tyndall AFB in Florida before being forwarded to local search and rescue forces, me included. Needless to say, no one likes hearing an ELT going off when the pilot is no longer in peril.I climbed into the plane and started looking for the ELT. I’d shut off non-distress ELTs before with CAP, usually after a pilot had landed hard and left. This usually involves removing the ELT unit (its a sealed orange box) from the plane and flipping the switch to the “reset” position before releasing it to return to the “arm” (standby) mode.I couldn’t find it, so I called the Emergency Services Officer at my CAP squadron.“Hey, Co (name withheld,) its Payne, I just had a plane crash at Tipton.”“Okay.”“Well, I can’t find the ELT and need a way to shut it off.”“Hmm…Okay, you won’t be able to SHUT it off, but you can block the signal. Wrap some aluminum foil around the ELT antenna.”“Got it. Thanks. See you Wednesday (at the weekly meeting.”)“See ya.”“Hey, does this count as a save? Hello? You still there? Damn it.”I hopped back in the ops truck and drove back to the FBO to grab aluminum foil and duct tape. Right before I stepped out the door, the phone rang:“Good Afternoon, Tipton Airport, Ryan speaking, how may I help you?”“Hello, this is (I forgot her name,) from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. We are picking up a signal from an ELT in your area.”“Yeah, I thought you were. I’m in CAP so I know how the system works. We had a plane crash here. The pilot’s uninjured. I was just about to head out and shut the ELT off.”“Okay, so the plane is on the airport?”“Yes.”“Thank you.”“You’re welcome.”As I walked around the plane looking for the ELT antenna, I noticed a flashing red light on the dashboard. The light was right above a switch labeled “ELT.” I flipped the switch to “reset.”Once the cops had begun to leave, M called a towing company we had used before. They told him they were busy and would be there in two hours. We went back to the FBO with the pilot in tow. He was still shocked.One of the cops, before he left the airport, noticed the pilot’s Ipad inside the plane and brought it into the FBO for him. Since I had nothing else to do, and the plane was totaled, I decided to clean it out for him.I drove the ops truck onto the runway and loaded everything that wasn't bolted down into the ops truck. Luggage, oil containers, sunglasses, seat covers, blankets, phone chargers, everything. I completely filled the entire passenger side of the truck with baggage and other belongings. I then drove back to the FBO and told the pilot I had unloaded his belongings for him.Before the truck arrived, he wanted to drive out to his plane one last time to view the damage. We hopped in the ops truck and drove out. He had to sit in the back seat since the passenger seat was buried.“Damn. Nice plane.” said I in a disappointed tone of voice. “Do you have insurance?”“Only liability.”“Fuck.” said I under my breath, startled by the fact it had slipped.“Don’t worry about it.”Let me tell you, when you like planes and see one totaled, it is slightly depressing. Much like a motorhead would be saddened seeing a wreaked ’67 Mustang on a truck, us pilots (and aspiring pilots) are saddened when we see a plane wreak.He told me he wasn’t going to take all his stuff home with him, it was too much. He had recently moved to Florida and had flown up commercially to pick up his plane. He was taking off from Tipton to take his plane to its new home. And it crashed on the way out.We drove out the gate and pulled in front of the FBO’s dumpster. He began to sort through his belongings, deciding what he would take, what he would give away, and what he would throw away. He did this with his eyes on the verge of tears.After doing this, we pulled back onto the ramp and parked in front of the FBO. After I walked inside, my manager instructed me to grab an empty one gallon gas can from the fire house and take a sample of 100LL Avgas in case the FAA wanted a sample. I grabbed the can, took a sample, and sealed the can shut with a signed piece of duct tape. We would latter learn that our fuel quality was perfect and did not cause the crash.Some time later, the towing company showed up with a heavy duty wrecker (80,000Lbs capacity) and informed us they had a flatbed truck about 15 minutes behind. We lead him out to the plane. He had thought the aircraft had come down on the runway, not 75–100 feet into the grass. While we were waiting for the flatbed to arrive, the guy started to place airbags under the left wing in an attempt to pull the main gear back down. (Aircraft wings are angled such that the wingtip is slightly higher than the wing root, so there was some space for the airbag.)Once he got it up and propped against a stack of 2x4′s (I’ve forgotten the technical term for them,) he tried to pull the wheel down. Unfortunately, it was jammed and wouldn’t budge.Time for Plan B.He grabbed a dolly and stacked 2x4’s on it. He used the airbags initially before using the crane on the wrecker attached to the nose of the aircraft to lift the plane up until he could slide the dolly underneath. Once the wing had some kind of wheel underneath it, he used the winch on a flatbed (which had been driven onto the grass) to pull the plane on.The winch was attached to the only feature on the aircraft they could find: the propeller. Pulling on the propeller essentially left it in an non-airworthy state; no “parting out” the prop.All the while, metal was screeching, as if the plane was moaning in agony. Needless to say, the pilot didn’t seem to enjoy that. He still seemed attached to the plane five hours after nearly dying. And who could blame him? It was his first plane and, now that it was totaled, he wanted to get as much money back out of it as possible.While this was going on, we had one plane enter the downwind leg of the traffic pattern announcing its intention to land on runway 10:“Tipton Traffic, N——-(I’ve since forgotten thier tail number,) on the 45 (degree intercept for downwind,) Runway 10, Tipton.”“N———, Tipton Unicom, the runway is closed.”“When’s it going to be open?”“I don’t know, we’re working on it now.”“Well, is there enough room for us to fit by?”“Look, the ru…”“Let me handle this.”, said M. “We had a plane crash. We are currently working on removing it.”“But will we fit?”“No. We’ve got a wrecker on the runway pulling the plane out of the mud. You can not land here.”Just as he said that, the towing crew got the plane onto the flatbed.“Give us 20 minutes to finish up here.”“Roger, Tipton Traffic, N——- is entering a holding pattern just off downwind, Tipton.”We couldn’t ship the plane to a scrap yard with the wings sticking out 15′+ on each side. Besides, we might have been called by the FAA or NTSB asking to inspect the plane in an attempt to deduce why it crashed.Somehow, the flatbed didn’t get stuck in the mud and pulled onto the runway with N5512Q on its back. We wound up towing it to one of the transient parking spots in front of the FBO and lowered in onto the ground. Metal scrapping on concrete is not a pleasant sound. Once it was one the ground, M and I grabbed some tie down straps out of the truck and strapped it down to the anchor points embedded into the ramp (light planes can be blown away in high winds, hence they are tied down to anchors embedded into the ground.)Once it was strapped down, I went back out of the runway and crept down it at five miles per hour preforming a VERY through FOD (foreign object debris) check. (The tiniest screw can catastrophically destroy a jet engine, leading to a potential crash. And we’d rather not have another one.)The towing crew then left. M offered to drive the pilot to the BWI airport Marriott hotel for the night. The pilot would catch a flight down to Florida in the morning. We then loaded the pilot’s belongings into M’s SUV. M then instructed me to download the pictures from the camera onto the computer and write a rough log of events before closing up. I did so.Once the incident “paperwork” had been handled, followed my normal closing routine, albeit, almost three hours latter than normal. I rinsed out the coffee pot, took out the trash, closed out the register, and locked the doors before finally driving home.I’m glad I was off for the next six days.The plane sat in that spot until January when it was moved to one of our seldom used parking spots along the taxiway.The last I saw of it was in May. Someone from an aircraft salvage company came by and began to salvage all usable parts from the airframe before cutting the wings off (they had since had their fuel drained) and loading it onto a trailer and driving it off the airport to a scrapyard.This was a small plane crash with only one person onboard. There was no fire, no explosion, no massive emergency services response. This had practically zero media coverage, save for a few very short news articles.Even though no one was injured or killed, and there was no damage save for the plane, the crash was stressful for myself and, to a greater extent, to the pilot.Initially, it was disbelief, followed by panic (“Shit! Did I just witness someone die!?!”) Then came boredom, followed by physical discomfort as we worked to remove the plane from the runway. Next was the annoyance of repeatedly telling a pilot the runway was closed. I later learned that someone at Leesburg had forgotten to click “submit” on his computer while filing the NOTAM. As a result the pilot had never received the NOTAM during his pre-flight briefing. In the weeks that followed, I had a very minor amount of nervousness whenever I thought about flying out of Tipton. Such nervousness was unneeded. Fortunately, it went away when I was offered a free flight by a friend. He was a flight instructor; his student, one of my dad’s coworkers. After about one minute of being airborne on that December day three weeks after the crash, the nervousness faded away.I imagine for the pilot it was a case of sheer terror followed by shock, followed by disappointment, followed by thankfulness (just in time for Thanksgiving.) I haven’t seen the pilot since (as he is now in Florida.) Hopefully he is still flying.

The question has been well answered up to this point, but the short answer is the technology will likely be available for download in “Beta” mode as early as 2017. But, 2018 would be where I would place a bet if I only had one chip. Full production will likely be 2020 or 2021.The long answer is it depends on who you ask:Volvo:•“Today, we are close to creating cars capable of truly autonomous driving that will revolutionise the way you travel and change society for the better. Here is our guide to what autonomous driving means and how it came about.” – Volvo Cars•In 2017, 100 autonomous cars each will introduced as a trial in Gothenburg, London, and China. The call this the “Drive Me Project”. Will likely not work in all weather situations.•They have have partnered with Autoliv, an existing supplier of active safety systems. – Volvo Cars•Volvo is using Nvidia’s GPU-based deep-learning system. – Digital Trends | Technology News and Product Reviews•Interim steps in self-parking cars and additional active safety systems.•Vision: No fatalities in a Volvo car by 2020.•Volvo believes Level 2/3 autonomy is an unsafe solution and not an endpoint.•Volvo is "taking responsibility both for crash events, and we're also programming it for extreme events like people walking in the road even where they're not supposed to be. There's a massive amount of work put into making it handle a crash or conflict situations.“ -Trent Victor, senior technical leader of crash avoidance at Volvo - The Verge•“It's mostly a difference of autonomous design philosophy for Tesla and Volvo. Tesla believes drivers can be trusted to make the appropriate decision with regards to their vehicle while Volvo wants to keep the driver from even putting himself into the position of getting into trouble with its autonomous tech.” – The Verge•“Volvo plans to roll out a system similar to Autopilot in 2017, but by 2020 Coelingh said Volvo’s self-driving technology will be so advanced that no supervision will be needed, and the driver can instead do something else while behind the wheel.” – Tech Insider•“The company has stated that it will accept full liability when its vehicles are in autonomous mode, and has announced plans to expand its pilot program to China and the United States. Volvo has followed rivals like BMW in setting 2021 as a target deployment date, though it is still looking for its own collaborators to work with.”•“Volvo has also partnered with Microsoft to further its research efforts in this space. Read More: Volvo, Wired, IB Times”– Venture Capital Database•"It's our ambition to have a car that can drive fully autonomously on the highway by 2021. […] This technology is something as a carmaker you cannot develop by yourself.“ - CEO Hakan Samuelsson, Automotive NewsUber:•"Travis [Kalanick] recently told me that in 2020, if Teslas are autonomous, he'd want to buy all of them," said Steve Jurvetson, a board member and early investor in Tesla. "And I was like, 'What?' And he's like 'All 500,000 estimated for 2020 production, I want them all.' But he couldn't get a return call from Elon, so he was like, whatever.“ – Tech Insider•Last January, Uber poached 1/3 of Carneige Mellon’s Top Robotics Lab to Build Self-driving Cars:“All told, Uber snatched up about 50 people from Carnegie Mellon, including many from its highest ranks. That's an unusually high number of people to leave at once, and accounted for about a third of the staff NREC had at the end of last year. Many were top employees, including David Stager, who had been there since 1997 and is now Uber's lead systems engineer; Jean-Sébastien Valois, a senior commercialization specialist who had been with NREC for nearly 12 years (and lists himself as "on leave" on CMU's site); and Anthony Stentz, NREC's director for the past four and a half years, who had been at the center since 1997. News of some of the departures was reported earlier this year by TechCrunch and The Pittsburgh Business Times.” – The Verge•Uber continues to raise cash (currently $13B + available credit) and rumors of an early IPO are starting.•“Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, has indicated in a tweet that he expects Uber’s fleet to be driverless by 2030. The service will then be so inexpensive and ubiquitous that car ownership will be obsolete.(Source: Mobility Lab, 2015-08-18)” – Gearing up to save lives, reduce costs, resource consumption•“Uber China has removed a major capital drain; the deal coincided with news that the company would plow $500M into a global mapping initiative. Read More: New York Times, The Verge” – Venture Capital DatabaseGoogle:•“Google has never given a formal deadline, but has suggested it's working on having the technology ready by 2020.” – Tech Insider•2020 Implied by Chris Urmson, Director of Self-Driving Cars at Google[x], in March 2015 at TED•“Google has put in more than 1.2 million miles with its test vehicles using software to drive themselves, and has estimated it could have a fully autonomous car ready for public roads by about 2020.” – Bloomberg.com•Similar to Volvo, Google believes Level 2/3 autonomy is an unsafe solution and not an endpoint.•“In May 2014, the company announced plans to test an extremely compact self-driving two-seater; a YouTube video shows a gray and white vehicle, a kind of ladybug on wheels, with an unusually facelike front grille. It won't have a steering wheel or brakes. Indeed, it's designed to go no faster than 25 mph, and appears intended for short runs on, say, college campuses, or in dense urban areas. (A Google spokesperson says the speed is capped at 25 mph for testing purposes.) What Google hasn't done, despite much publicity around its automotive efforts, is make any moves toward selling its self-driving car. "This is still a research project for them," insists Vogt. But Google has announced it will build 100 prototypes of that autonomous two-seater, working to refine its technology, and reports circulated in late 2014 that Google was seeking an automotive partner to bring that car to market, though it may take up to five years to do so. ” – Small Business Ideas and Resources for Entrepreneurs•“Google’s self-driving car team is expanding and hiring more people with automotive industry expertise, underscoring the company’s determination to move the division past the experimental stage.”•“The operation now employs at least 170 workers, according to a Reuters review of their profiles on LinkedIn” -http://tmsnrt.rs/1oxX4Lg•“In the past four weeks (March 2016), Google has advertised nearly 40 new positions on the team, and many are related to manufacturing. The team currently has six people with such experience, including purchasing, supplier development and supply chain management.”•“Google’s team is being assembled by John Krafcik, an industry veteran who previously headed Hyundai’s U.S. operations and is an expert in product development and manufacturing. Krafcik joined Google in September 2015.”•“Paul Luskin, was hired last month as operations manager, according to his Linkedin profile. An engineer with stints at Jaguar Cars, Ford and Japanese supplier Denso Corp, Luskin most recently was president of Ricardo Defense Systems, a unit of Britain’s Ricardo PLC, according to the Linkedin profile. Google hired industry veteran Andy Warburton in July to head the vehicle engineering team, according to his Linkedin profile. Warburton spent two years as a senior engineering manager at Tesla and 16 years as an engineering manager at Jaguar. A third auto veteran, Sameer Kshisagar, joined Google in November as head of global supply management on the self-driving car team. Kshisagar is a manufacturing expert who previously worked for GM, according to his Linkedin profile.”•“Google has said previously that it intends to ready the technology for a marketable self-driving car by 2020, but it may never manufacture vehicles itself.”•“Krafcik and Chris Urmson, director of the car team, have said they want to forge partnerships with established automakers and others to build vehicles. Krafcik made a public pitch for alliances at an auto industry conference in Detroit in January.”•“The tech giant is more likely to contract out manufacturing – much like Apple does with iPhone – or to license technology to existing car manufacturers, automotive industry experts said. Licensing would follow the model Google has used with its Android operating system for mobile devices.”•“The tug-of-war over who controls – and profits from – the stream of user data in self-driving cars is ‘an inherent and fundamental conflict’ between Google and traditional automakers” - Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie-Mellon University professor who advises companies on self-driving car development•“Instead, Google may choose to build its own engineering and design prototypes, then partner with a Chinese automaker or an Asian contractor such as Hon Hai Precision Industry’s Foxconn Technology Co that wants to enter the automotive field, several experts said.”•“Michael Tracy, a Michigan-based auto manufacturing consultant, said Google sees the potential of several different revenue streams from its self-driving technology, including licensing its mapping database and vehicle control software, as well as an integrated package of software, sensors and actuators that would form the backbone of a self-driving vehicle.”•“The least likely prospect is that Google will manufacture its own vehicles, Tracy said, due to the massive expenditures required and the stiff competition from established automakers.”- Tech News That Matters•“Google’s founder Sergey Brin has made it clear that the company plans to have its driverless cars on the market no later than 2018. At the signing ceremony for California’s autonomous vehicles law, he outlined Googles path towards commercialization of its driverless cars. Within 2013 Google plans to expand the number and users of their driverless cars to Google employees. Thereafter it will not take longer than 5 years to get the cars into the market.(Source: Driverless car market watch, 2012-10-02)” – Gearing up to save lives, reduce costs, resource consumptionToyota:•“Toyota Motor Corp. is spending $1 billion to form a research institute focused on the artificial intelligence and robotics technology it needs to make cars that can overcome driver errors and reduce traffic fatalities.”•“The company will also work toward making it easier for elderly drivers to hang onto their keys in aging countries including Japan and the U.S., Toyota’s biggest markets.•“Toyota Research Institute will start operations in January, and the Japanese carmaker’s five-year initial investment will go toward setting up locations near Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”•“The 2020 time frame has particular resonance for Japanese carmakers, as the companies want to showcase their progress toward self-driving in conjunction with Tokyo hosting the Olympics the same year.”– Bloomberg.com•“Traffic accidents involving the elderly are on the rise in Japan, contributing to the industry falling short of meeting a target for fewer than 2,500 road fatalities a year by 2018 set by the National Security Agency. That is even though traffic-related deaths have declined for a 14th straight year to 4,113 fatalities last year. About 30 percent of vehicles sold in the country now are equipped with driver-assistance features such as collision avoidance.” – Bloomberg.com•“Just this April, it also announced its third US university partnership with an automotive engineering stalwart, the University of Michigan.”•“August 2016 has seen it double down on its university efforts, with a further $22M investment to the University of Michigan to drive robotics and self-driving research. The company has targeted 2021 as a goal for deploying “AI car features” to the road. Read More: Wired, Techcrunch”- Venture Capital DatabaseHonda:•“’We believe automated driving technology can greatly contribute to reducing on-road accident and ease congestion,’ Fumihiko Ike, head of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association and Honda chairman, said in a briefing on the car show this week [October 2015]. ‘By integrating automated driving technology with small-scale transport, Japan can overcome the challenges of having to establish full-scaled public transportation in thinly populated rural areas.’” – Bloomberg.comBMW:•“BMW will make semi-autonomous features standard in all their cars starting in 2020, but isn't rushing to develop a fully autonomous car.”•“BMW's all-electric i3 can already park itself and come back to pick you up when you're ready! But BMW is in no way rushing to be the first in the driverless car market. CEO Harald Krüger said in December that the company is holding off on more advanced driverless features until they are sure they are completely safe.”•“BMW has tested its driverless tech on the racetrack and does currently offer some driver assistance features in its BMW 7 series model, such as automatic parking while the driver is at the wheel, the company is holding off on more advanced driverless features[…].”– Bloomberg.comNissan:•“Nissan is committed to have a commercially viable autonomous car on the roads by 2020.” – Tech Insider and Nissan USA: Innovation & Excitement For Everyone•“Nissan has been working to develop this technology alongside teams from some of the world's top universities, including MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Tokyo. The combined research time equals 80 years of research and development, the kind of effort it takes to put Nissan at the forefront of this important development.”•“The building blocks of autonomous driving technology already exists in Nissan vehicles in the form of Nissan’s Safety Shield-inspired technologies. These technologies can monitor a nearly 360-degree view around a vehicle for risks, offering warnings to the driver and taking action to help avoid crashes if necessary.”•“The prototype car can drive autonomously on a highway, merging, passing and performing other typical driving maneuvers.”– Nissan USA: Innovation & Excitement For Everyone•“Nissan seeks a safer, more comfortable and environmentally friendly mobile future.” - Toshiyuki Shiga, Vice Chairman, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., Nissan USA: Innovation & Excitement For EveryoneFord:•"When it comes to autonomous vehicles, we've been at this for over 10 years. We were part of the original Darpa contest over 10 years ago. What we have said is, somebody by the end of this decade will probably have a Level 4 autonomous vehicle, [whereby] the driver does not have to step into a predefined area which has already been 3D-mapped. What we have said is, we may not be the first, but when we do, it will be true to our brand, which means accessibility. We want to make sure it's available to everyone, and not just folks who can afford luxury cars." Ford CEO Mark Fields recently told Business Insider.•“Ford is tripling its fleet of Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicles this year – making the company’s fully autonomous vehicle fleet the largest of all automakers – and accelerating the development and testing of its virtual driver software in both urban and suburban environments”•“Ford will add 20 Fusion Hybrid autonomous vehicles, bringing the company's autonomous fleet to about 30 vehicles being tested on roads in California, Arizona and Michigan.”•“New fleet vehicles will use Velodyne’s advanced new Solid-State Hybrid Ultra PUCK™ Auto sensor, providing precision required for mapping and creating accurate, real-time 3D models of the surrounding environment, enhancing Ford’s software development and testing to handle a broader range of driving scenarios”•“Autonomous vehicles are part of Ford Smart Mobility, the plan to take the company to the next level in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, the customer experience, and data and analytics”- http://media.ford.comGM:•“General Motors will have a fleet of self-driving cars available for employee use in late 2016.” – Tech Insider•“GM bought self-driving car startup Cruise Automation in March for $1 billion. But we have yet to hear a precise deadline on when it could be ready. GM also invested $500 million in Lyft to build driverless on-demand cars.”– Tech Insider•“GENERAL MOTORS IS quietly developing autonomous vehicle technology and plans to have a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Volts roaming the campus of its technical center in suburban Detroit next year (2016).”•“It plans to capitalize on that work with “Super Cruise,” a semi-autonomous feature that will let a car handle itself on the freeway. The feature is expected to appear on an unspecified Cadillac model next year. ”•“’You need embedded connectivity to make autonomous work. And that’s where General Motors has a lead,’ with nearly two decades of OnStar-equipped vehicles on the market. It’s moving from there to vehicle to vehicle communication, starting with two Cadillac models next year.” – Mary Barra•“And the Volt is a fitting car for the project: an electrified system makes it easier for engineers to tap into the controls, but more importantly, it’s the most forward-looking car in the GM stable. There’s a reason nearly every autonomous prototype out there is electric: When you’re talking bout one technology of the future, it makes sense to pair it with another.”- WIRED•“GM shares a common vision for the deployment of autonomous vehicles at a mass scale — a clear and vivid vision.” - Kyle Vogt, Cruise's founder and CEO (an autonomous vehicle startup acquired by GM for $1B this year)•“Cruise's 40 employees would remain in San Francisco but that the size of the team would be aggressively expanded.”•“Shared mobility is a very obvious place for GM to use Cruise's technology, Ammann said, as the automaker seeks to ‘fundamentally change the future of mobility.’”•“GM has also been developing its own semi-autonomous technology in-house, with its Super Cruise technology slated to come to market on high-end Cadillac models in 2017. GM has said that the Cruise acquisition would have “no impact” on its Super Cruise launch, and has also detailed plans to hire 700 engineers focused on autonomous R&D. Read More: The Verge, Bloomberg” – Venture Capital Database•“Richard Holman, a 30-year automotive veteran running GM’s foresight and trends unit, said Tuesday that three years ago most industry participants would have estimated 2035 as a reasonable timetable for self-driving cars. Speaking to a conference in suburban Detroit, Mr. Holman said now most people see that technology being deployed by 2020, if not sooner.” – The Wall Street Journal & Breaking News, Business, Financial and Economic News, World News and VideoDiamler:•“Daimler, the maker of the Mercedes-Benz, plans to have its driverless trucks ready by 2020.”•“In October, A Mercedes-Benz big-rig made history by driving itself on a public road, marking the first time a big-rig drove semi-autonomously on a highway. Daimler said in 2015 that its driverless trucks are two to three years away from production, Daily Mail reported.”•“’We want to be the first to launch autonomous functions in production vehicles. You can be sure we will accomplish that in this decade,’ Thomas Weber, Daimler head of development, said in 2013.”– Tech InsiderAudi:•“The automaker was the first company to receive an autonomous driving permit in Nevada in 2012 and California in 2014. ” – Tech Insider•“Audi is part of the German consortium — including Daimler and BMW — that bought Nokia’s HERE precision mapping assets for $3.1B. HERE has also recently made strides in their initiative to design an open specification for vehicle sensor data collected and transmitted by connected vehicles.” – Venture Capital DatabaseBaidu:•“Baidu, a Beijing-based search company, is aiming to have a commercial model of its driverless car ready by 2018.”•“Baidu is aiming to have a commercial model of its driverless vehicle ready in just two years. The company plans to introduce self-driving shuttles that will be capable of driving in a designated loop in China by 2018.”– Tech Insider•“Baidu hasn’t decided whether its first autonomous vehicle will have a steering wheel” - Baidu’s chief scientist Andrew Ng, The Wall Street Journal & Breaking News, Business, Financial and Economic News, World News and Video•“Chinese search-engine giant Baidu Inc. Senior Vice President Wang Jing said Friday that the company plans to mass produce a driverless car in five years [2021]—so that babies born today won’t need a driver’s license.” – The Wall Street Journal & Breaking News, Business, Financial and Economic News, World News and VideoApple:•On […] "Late Show [with Stephen Colbert]" in September, Apple CEO Tim Cook dodged the subject entirely, only stating: ’We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them.’” – Tech Insider•“Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley, and is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it, the Guardian has learned. Documents show the oft-rumoured Apple car project appears to be further along than many suspected.” News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian August 2015Honda:•“Honda has been building semi-autonomous functionality, including forward-collision warning, lane- departure warning and lane-keeping assist. These features are already being rolled out in Honda's Acuras and the Civic model year 2016, which costs about $22,000.”•“With the current roll-out of semi-autonomous functions, which it says will pave the way for full autonomy on highways by 2020, Honda says it differs from rivals, whose self-driving efforts have centered on their luxury models.”•"This is a unique differentiator for Honda ... who is committed to the concept of safety for everyone," said [Jim] Keller [chief engineer for Honda Research and Development Americas}. "Unless we democratize it across our lineup it will be just a niche."- Business & Financial News, Breaking US & International News | Reuters•“Honda has received approval from California to test autonomous vehicles on public streets (with restrictions on the number of vehicles and the testing methods). Like Apple, the automaker is also using the GoMentum Station proving ground, with 2,100 acres of testing area for its self-driving fleet. Honda also introduced semi-autonomous ADAS (advanced-driver assistance systems) options on its entry-level Civic, offering lane-keeping, automatic braking, and adaptive cruise control functionality. These features are also available on luxury models (offered by brands like Tesla, BMW, etc.), but are notable on a vehicle with a $20,440 base price. Read More: Re/code, San Francisco Business Times, Engadget, Honda Press Release” – Venture Capital DatabaseHyundai:•“Hyundai sounded a more conservative note last September. Its European head Thomas Schmid asserted that autonomous driving would come “by far not as quick as everyone says,” giving a timetable of 10 to 15 years. Nevertheless, the Korean motor group seems to be intensifying its efforts to compete in 2016, ramping up investments in AI and setting up a new business unit to develop “hyper-connected” and self-driving cars in the near future.” – Venture Capital DatabasePSA:•“Just this April, the French PSA Groupe (including Peugeot, Citroën and DS) announced that two Citroën cars had driven “eyes off” from Paris to Amsterdam. The vehicles navigated over 300 km (186 miles) without supervision on “authorized stretches” of road, with PSA claiming the cars had achieved Level 3 Automation in this mode. The “eyes off” mode is slated to arrive by 2021, while semi-autonomous “hands off” modes will be available by 2020. These features, along with electric vehicles and new models, form the core of PSA’s broader “Push to Pass” growth strategy (including a return to the US). Read More: PSA Groupe” – Venture Capital DatabaseVolkswagen:•“In March 2016 VW Group CEO Matthias Muller announced that the board had just signed off on a huge autonomous driving initiative, boldly claiming that their goal was to “[bring] these technologies to market faster than the competition.” The Group’s head of digitalization asserts that self-driving cars will be “commonplace” by 2025. Read More: Digital Trends, V-Charge, Reuters” Venture Capital Database