In July 1995 a CMU minivan, with no hands on the wheel or feet on pedals, drove coast to coast across the US on public roads.

Components: (a) July 1995; (b) a CMU Navlab minivan from the team of Thorpe and Kanade; (c) coast to coast across the US on public roads; (d) no hands on the wheel and no feet on the pedals. Historical record of the 'No Hands Across America' trip (Navlab 5, Pomerleau and Jochem) as checked against these parts: True: all four hold. Mostly true: the trip happened as stated, with a minor detail off, e.g. the team leads are named imprecisely, or there was a small share of manual steering. Mixed: the vehicle steered autonomously but throttle and brakes were controlled by a human, so 'no feet on pedals' is wrong while the rest holds. Mostly false: several parts fail, e.g. a large share of the distance was manually driven, or it was not coast to coast. False: no such trip took place in or around July 1995.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 No Hands Across America Official Press Release Carnegie Mellon University (hosted on Todd Jochem's CMU pages)

   “Research scientist Dean Pomerleau and robotics doctoral student Todd Jochem won't touch the steering wheel but they will operate the throttle and brakes of a 1990 Pontiac Trans Sport, known as Navlab 5.”

2. E2 Look, Ma, No Hands - News - Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University · 17 July 2015

   “The same feat also made headlines 20 years ago, when Carnegie Mellon's NavLab 5 minivan, with support from Delphi's corporate forerunner, Delco, steered itself for 2,800 of the 2,850 miles between Pittsburgh and San Diego.”

3. E3 Look, Ma, No Hands - News - Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University · 17 July 2015

   “"At the time, we were saying that fully autonomous driving would be 10–20 years out," recalled Dean Pomerleau, who hit the road with Todd Jochem on July 23, 1995.”

4. E4 History of self-driving cars - Wikipedia Wikipedia

   “This car, however, was semi-autonomous by nature: it used neural networks to control the steering wheel, but throttle and brakes were human-controlled, chiefly for safety reasons.”

E2 and E3, both from CMU, show that the Navlab 5 minivan set off in July 1995 (July 23) and steered itself for 2,800 of the 2,850 miles between Pittsburgh and San Diego. E1 and E4 show that Pomerleau and Jochem worked the throttle and brakes during the trip, with the neural network controlling only the steering. That makes the claim's "no feet on pedals" wrong, and the criteria rate that case as mixed. E1 and E3 name Pomerleau and Jochem as the people on the trip; the evidence does not say who led the team or address Thorpe's and Kanade's roles.