Google’s self-driving cars showed major safety improvements over the past year – but there were dozens of incidents when test drivers had to intervene, the company said in a report recently filed with California regulators.
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Google was one of seven companies required to disclose to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles the number of times a trained test driver had to seize the wheel either because of a technology failure or because a prototype auto was driving unsafely. Among other things, it introduces us to Google’s cadre of regular folks-among them a former baker, an artist, and a marketing exec-who the company employs as test (non)drivers. Google gets a tremendous amount of attention for the work it’s putting into self-driving cars.
The company said its cars needed safety-related help 341 times over 424,000 miles.
Moreover, going by the disclosure by Google in the safety report, autonomous control of Google’s self-driving vehicles had to be disengaged by a human driver in 69 other instances, so as to ensure the safe operation of the self-driving vehicle. A spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.
The department is reviewing all of the submitted reports, said spokesperson Jessica Gonzales. Since September 2014, the cars have been involved in nine accidents, though in each case another driver was found to be at fault, according to researchers from the University of MI.
Prof. David Bailey, from Birmingham’s Aston Business School, states that fully-autonomous cars without manual controls will not hit the streets in the near future, as “For a long period, you will see autonomous vehicles and human-driven cars share the road”. And yet now it looks like the cars are regularly failing, unable to make a simple trip without panicking and handing the wheel back to the human in charge. In addition to Google, the permitted companies are BMW, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen Group of America, Mercedes Benz, Delphi Automotive, Tesla Motors, Bosch, Nissan and Cruise Automation. His statement was released before other automakers’ reports were posted online by the DMV.
The head of the company’s self-driving vehicle project said that while the results are encouraging, they also show the technology has yet to reach his goal of not needing someone behind the wheel.
The Internet search giant, which has been developing self-driving cars since 2009, said it ran computer simulations of those incidents. On average, Google experienced one disengagement per 1,244 miles.
Edmunds says: It’s still early days for development of self-driving cars, but Google and others appear to be making good progress. The company’s rate of human intervention has improved in recent months, according to its data, but Urmson cautioned that the rate might again rise as Google subjects the cars to more challenging environments and weather conditions.
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Google said the number of incidents fell rapidly as it refined its self-driving hardware and software.
