Google Admits Fault for Self-driving Car Collision
History was made last month when a self-driving Google car may have actually been the cause of a minor accident in California.
According to the full report by Reuters, the Google car was travelling at less than 3 km/h when it tried to take a wide turn in order avoid some sandbags in a lane. Unfortunately the move took it into the path of a bus travelling about 24 km/h.
In a statement earlier this week, Google took responsibility saying that they must bear some of the responsibility “because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision.” However, they also stood behind their tech and the car’s backup driver, who both determined that there was space to merge and that the bus was going to let them in. Luckily, no one was hurt and damage to the bus was minimal.
While the official investigation hasn’t determined who was at fault, it’s important to note that Google is not afraid to use the opportunity as a learning experience and say that they still have work to do to make the technology as safe as possible. They’ve already said that this has resulted in tweaks to the behavioural software.
“From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles, and we hope to handle situations like this more gracefully in the future."
Critics of driverless technology are using the incident as evidence that the technology simply isn’t ready. This comes in the midst of Google’s efforts to begin testing cars that don’t have steering wheels or any user input at all. Currently regulations require that a driver be on hand to take over in a self-driving car in case of emergency. Removing the ability for driver input would present a radical change in the personal transport industry and especially the way auto insurance is determined.