Researchers from Stanford pitted their driverless Audi TTS nicknamed Shelley against a race car driver at Thunderhill Raceway in California and beat him in the first recorded event of a driverless car defeating a human-driven car in car-to-car competition. Naturally, there are several caveats and hippo-sized chunks of salt to be taken with the announcement.
Caveat One – Shelley did not defeat said race car driver in every competition, only beating him once – by .04 – in one race.
Caveat Two – said race car driver was, needless to say, not of Lewis Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo nor Sebastian Vettel caliber. Instead, it was the CEO of the track [David Vodden] who is an amateur race car driver.
Caveat Three – the races were not conducted one-on-one style a la “Gran Turismo” or any other typical racing game, and instead were run as separate timed laps – so, whatever.