Google said the accident was caused by the “type of misunderstanding [that] happens between human drivers on the road every day”.
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Tech giant Google has announced that it modifying the software that runs its self-driving vehicle after an incident, which caused the auto to collide with a bus.
Google said that its vehicle was moving to the far right lane to turn right onto another road, but detected that sand bags were on the ground, blocking its path.
The right lane was wide enough to let some cars turn and others go straight, but the Lexus needed to slide to its left within the right lane to get around the obstruction.
The report claims that the self-driving auto was trying to move around some sandbags in the street when it sideswiped the school bus.
“In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our vehicle hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision”, Google said. Google later accepted responsibility for the incident, assuring it will bring the necessary modification to its software.
A Google driverless auto has been involved in an accident with a bus and Google has said it “bears some responsibility” for the first time. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that.
There was no injury to the bus passengers, and all the 15 passengers were transferred to another bus.
“An internal VTA investigation is still going on, there are several pieces of information that need to be examined, so no determination of liability has been made”, spokeswoman Stacey Hendler Ross said in a written statement.
Jonathan Hewett, head of strategy at insurance telematics specialist, Octo Telematics, comments, “The advent of autonomous cars could revolutionise transportation, offering a safer, more fuel-efficient and comfortable experience”. No one has been seriously injured, the AP reported. The Google vehicle, a 2012 Lexus RX 450h outfitted with the company’s self-driving equipment, was in autonomous mode near Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.
This incident has occurred at a time when government authorities asked self-driving auto makers to put steering wheel, pedals and brakes in their vehicles as a licensed human driver could take over at any time.
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Google sees that as the next natural step for the technology, and has pressed California’s DMV and federal regulators to authorize cars in which humans have limited means of intervening. “There needs to be a licensed driver who can takeover, even if in this case the test driver failed to step in as he should have”.
