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Google Self-Driving Car Might Have Caused First Crash In Autonomous Mode (roboticstrends.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the crash-course dept.

An anonymous reader writes: While driving in autonomous mode, a Google self-driving car was involved in an accident with a public bus in California on Valentine's Day, according to an accident report filed with the California DMV.The accident report, signed by Chris Urmson, says the Google self-driving car was trying to get around some sandbags on a street when its left front struck the bus' right side. The car was going 2 mph, while the bus was going 15 mph.Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield. No injuries were reported. If it's determined the Google self-driving car was at fault, it would be the first time one of its cars caused an accident while in autonomous mode.

1 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. How many autonomous crashes were overridden? by Your.Master · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm a big believer in autonomous cars, but when I see

    Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.

    it makes me wonder how many crashes we would have had in autonomous mode, if there weren't an attentive driver who was fully aware he was sitting in an experimental vehicle.

    Even if the first rounds of autonomous cars still require a driver for override (for legal reasons if nothing else), it seems like the number of autonomous crashes that likely would have happened is the number has to be driven way down to be comparable to, or less than, the ones with human drivers*; it's not really the amount of autonomous crashes overall that is important.

    Also makes me wonder whether any of the manual mode crashes were initiated in autonomous mode and the manual override driver just couldn't recover the situation.

    *whether average human drivers or above-average human drivers or even below-average human drivers are the standard is up for debate.