The company’s self-driving cars have clocked up well over a million miles across various states in the USA, and until now have only reported minor “fender benders” – the American slang for a small collision.
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The incident occurred on February 14 when one of the Lexus SUVs it has outfitted with sensors and cameras hit the side of the bus near the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The Lexus was traveling at less than two miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour came in the opposite direction.
The statement went on to say that the incident would not have happened had the self-driving vehicle not moved, also faulting the test driver of the auto for not enacting the brake manually as the driver believed the bus would stop to let the vehicle out. Google will be meeting with the California Department of Motor Vehicles to determine who was at fault.
While the incident may not mark the first time one of the internet search-leader’s self-driving cars have crashed, it is the maiden smash in which the autonomous vehicle is at fault.
Google has been pushing authorities for more extensive road tests of self-driving cars and has joined other companies working on similar projects to make case that most of traffic accidents were the results of human errors.
The vehicle and the test driver “believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue”, it said.
A critic of Google’s self-driving vehicle efforts said the collision shows the tech giant should be kept from taking onto public streets self-driving prototypes it built without a steering wheel or pedals. No one was injured. They noted that from now, their cars will deeply understand large vehicles e.g. buses are less likely to yield for these cars as compared to other vehicles.
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In recent months, Google has been teaching its self-driving cars to hug the right side of wide lanes when it wants to turn right to allow other drivers to pass, rather than obstructing traffic and making other drivers impatient as Google’s vehicle waits to turn.
