But here’s one big caveat: The self-driving vehicles weren’t at fault in any of the crashes they were involved in. The accidents also saw more than three times the number of total injuries per million vehicle miles traveled and somewhat elevated numbers of injuries per crash. It’s an ongoing process, and to help improve how its self-driving cars react to the unpredictable nature of children’s movements, Google invited trick-or-treaters and their families to hang around its fleet of parked cars. This gives our sensors and software extra practice at recognizing children in all their unique shapes and sizes, even when they’re in odd costumes, Google said in the post.
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Google has often touted the cars as a safer, more predictable alternative to human drivers, pointing out that human error is responsible for 94 percent of all accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Even though they haven’t been at fault, self-driving test cars are involved in crashes at five times the rate of conventional cars, a new study finds. The number of injuries per crash for conventional vehicles was 0.25, while self-driving cars had 0.36.
Google declined to comment on any specific partnership, but a spokesman pointed to a Wall Street Journal article from September where the company mentions that it “doesn’t plan to manufacture its own cars and wants to partner with others to develop the technology”.
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“One might conclude that self-driving vehicles are more unsafe, but I don’t think the data actually show that right now”, Brandon Schoettle, one of the study’s authors, told NBC. The study tracked 11 autonomous vehicle crashes from 2012 to 2015, with 72.7 percent of the crashes occurring when the auto was stopped or driving slower than 5 miles per hour. The algorithm of the Google software is already more careful when pedestrians are crossing the road. “We teach our cars to drive more cautiously around children”. The maneuvers that the cars can undertake as a result of having children around include taking another course, slamming on the brakes or taking a few very evasive cuts to avoid children when children are jumping across the road to grab their ball or riding bicycles in the glory of being kids.
