Over the past six years since Google’s driverless cars hit the roads, 16 accidents have been recorded.
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Google is studying various awkward moments in driving for now, and also a few general driving behaviors to try and capture those into an algorithm that would make its cars drive more “humanistically”. Technical leader Chris Urmson has said in the past that he wants to have autonomous cars out before his son gets of age to apply for a California driver’s license, and he underlined the lack of safety on the roads. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company now has to teach the cars how to break speed limits and aim for corner apices instead.
That information would help shed light on exactly what happens when self-driving cars get into accidents, which Simpson said is important since the testing is happening on public roads – largely in the Bay Area, though Google recently expanded its testing grounds to Austin, Texas.
According to the DMV website, 10 different companies have received state permits to test autonomous vehicles – among them Google and several automotive giants like Honda, Nissan and Volkswagen.
For instance, a Google self-driving vehicle once encountered a person in a wheelchair chasing a turkey.
During a question and answer session with the audience, Brin revealed that Google’s self-driving cars can hear well enough to detect things like ambulance and police sirens. In all reported cases, accidents were either due to other drivers or happened when the auto was under manual control, the company says.
And in that ideal world – where cars are driven by software and all talk to each other – preventing accidents is easy; as long as the software works, there will never be an accident.
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As he understands it, Simpson said state law requires the DMV to respond to the rulemaking request within 30 days of submission. Based on Urmson’s comments, we suppose that’s more or less the whole point.
