Google’s first self-driving vehicle accident that hurt humans is now on video.
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The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said.
“Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road”, wrote Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving vehicle project, in the blog post.
“After we’d stopped, a vehicle slammed into the back of us at 17 miles per hour – and it hadn’t braked at all”, Urmson explains. Nevertheless, it’s inevitable that more accidents will follow over the coming months as Google sets its sights further afield than Mountain View – Austin having recently “welcomed” a couple of pod cars to its roads.
The idea of a auto that drives itself once belonged to the realm of science fiction, but Google’s efforts to make that fantasy a reality have hit some very real speed bumps. He continued, “We’ll take all this as a signal that we’re starting to compare favorably with human drivers”.
The SUV stopped at an intersection when another auto crashed into its back, and onboard diagnostics showed it didn’t brake at all, suggesting it a case of human error.
Google has pioneered self-driving technology. The tech giant also has 25 prototypes of its making, only two of which are on the streets. This was the 14th accident in six years and about three million kilometres of testing, according to the company. The Google vehicle suffered only scrapes on its rear bumper.
That’s not unusual. A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration looking at 2010 data found that 60% of property damage-only crashes and 24% of all injury crashes are not reported to the police, and that most of unreported injury accidents involved only minor injuries. Google has said its auto has not caused any of the collisions – though in 2011 an employee who took a auto to run an errand rear-ended another vehicle while the Google auto was out of self-driving mode.
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However, Ursom was careful to point out that none of the accidents were the fault of the self-driving auto, but rather of distracted drivers around the vehicle.
