CNET News - Keep your eyes on the road and paws on the wheel - Inside Scoop
CNET News - Keep your eyes on the road and paws on the wheel - Inside Scoop
2012-12-12
hi everyone and welcome to the inside
scoop I'm cnet's Cara tsuboi joined by
senior editor Wayne Cunningham who
covers car technology for the site
thanks for joining us Wayne welcome
today we're talking about a really sweet
wonderful little video at a New Zealand
that has started to go viral and it
depicts a dog driving a car give us the
background of the backstory of this
video well this this was done as kind of
a publicity stunt just a way to get
people to recognize that there are dogs
and shelters out there that can be
adopted and so this actually came out of
the Wellington New Zealand SPCA a
worldwide organization taking in dogs
strays and things like that or dogs that
are just given up to them and what
they've done is they've taken three dogs
and actually trained them to drive a car
that's amazing and it's basically to
prove that these dogs are smart just
because they're mud yeah they're stupid
exactly they're worthwhile they have
value and it's a way to show that you
know they can also eat rain later in
later years to yeah these are older dogs
sitting less PCA but you know there's
still smart perfectly trainable and
happy to work with these trainers of the
SPCA provided to train them to grab the
car they've actually got a mini
countryman and they show a number of
videos of them picking the dogs fixing
up the car so the dogs can drive it and
then of course the the big one is one of
the dogs same quarter actually driving
the car around a little bit of this
crack so when I first watched that video
I thought wow the dog really is you know
accelerating steering braking but as a
car expert you're saying that it might
not be that complicated no well really
what they're doing is they have a
trainer walking alongside the car as
they go and the trainer is kind of
yelling out commands to the dog so the
dog doesn't necessarily know what he's
came to breaks or no he's printing the
string wheel he's following commands as
he goes along and the car is you know
it's an automatic so it creeps along i
think what they've done is they have an
accelerator pedal for the dog in the
carpet the dogs not really using it so
the car just sort of creeps along and
you know it's two miles an hour or
something so the trainer can walk
alongside and a yellow can answer the
window and then the dog is very eager to
perform these commands and dog actually
turns the wheel to go around a bend in
the track and hits the brakes actually
at the end to stop the color which is
really delightful to see you cover cars
you rethink breathe cars have you ever
seen a dog driving a car before
no no actually that's one of the great
things i saw a photo that they posted to
one of the dog sitting in the driver's
seat ready to go and you know you see
photos like this all the time somebody
posted joke photo like oh my dogs
driving a car but this daughter she
driving the car she really doing yeah so
it's very unique in that sense I think
what's also unique is how fast this
video has spread I mean it came out of
New Zealand but it hit America pretty
quickly and it's all over social media
that's how you found out about right oh
yeah it's on facebook and i think it's
taken off right there and it's breeding
a lot of attention to the whole plight
of dogs you don't get by the SPCA and
apparently these dogs the three that
they trained for this this for driving
two of them have been adopted already
and the second one's still waiting
adoption but you know I suppose that's
going to happen pretty soon oh that's a
nice happy ending to this story already
thank you so much Wayne Cunningham
senior editor I'm Kara Tsuboi thanks for
watching the inside scoop
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