Self-Driving Cars In California: 4 Out of 48 Have Accidents, None Their Fault

An anonymous reader writes: The Associated Press reports that 48 self-driving cars have been navigating the roads of California since the state began issuing permits last year. Of those, only four have been in accidents, and none of the accidents were the fault of the autonomous driving technology. Seven different companies have tested autonomous cars on California's roads, but Google, which is responsible for almost half of them, was involved in three of the four accidents — the other one happened to a car from Delphi Automotive. All four of the accidents happened at speeds of under 10 mph, and human drivers were in control during two of them. The Delphi accident happened when another car broadsided it while its human driver was waiting to make a left turn.

The AP pieced together its report from the DMV and people who saw the accident reports. But critics note that there aren't direct channels to find this information. Since one of the chief selling points of autonomous cars is their relative safety over cars piloted by humans, the lack of official transparency is troubling. "Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss its three accidents in detail." Instead, the company affirmed its cars' accidents were "a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention."

Comments

Re:that's fine

[JMJimmy]

Self-driving cars need to be banned.

Why - it wasn't their fault?

Until it is, then we have semi-autonomous machines injuring/killing humans with no one to hold accountable because the ToS absolves the company of liability.

Re:Very high accident rates

[alphatel]

You are not considering the mileage driven. These cars are on the road for 100k miles + a year, so consider that 4 out of 720 cars were in an accident.

I don't find these stats promising.
Being from a family of 50k miles per year per driver, I can tell you that we all take vehicle safety highly seriously. We do not get into accidents, we do not get broadsided or hit pedestrians or bicyclists or even stop signs.
The two incidents I can recall in over 10 years are once my uncle got hit from behind at a full stop at a red light, and the other time some loony attacked my mother's van with a baseball bat while she was driving down a street in broad daylight. Both had to be reported, neither were "our fault".
What happened in California was probably at least partially the fault of the person or computer behind the wheel. In all likelihood, a human who sits behind a motorized cart all day is likely to make small, albeit non-fatal mistakes when they are finally prompted to take over the wheel. This might account for the two "low-fault" incidents reported, but I would hardly let them get away with "not at fault at all". When you drive with your full attention on your task, you can judge surroundings better, assess risks, quickly decide a course of action, and execute your escape fairly well. So sadly even little fender benders are someone's fault, and almost always both vehicles. The computer accidents? Who knows, shrouded in secrecy no doubt. Twenty bucks says Google paid good money to make it go away quickly and with an NDA.