Google acknowledges more accidents, defends driverless cars
Eleven of the tech giant’s test cars have gotten into accidents since the program began six years ago.
Google’s driverless cars have been involved with 11 accidents total since the program began six years ago, the director of the company’s self-driving car program Chris Urmson said in a Medium post Monday, May 11.
Urmson was responding to an Associated Press report stating that four of nearly 50 driverless cars being tested in California have been in minor accidents since September 2014, with three involving Lexus SUVs outfitted by Google and one involving another operator. California has allowed tests of driverless cars on public roads since September, and made accident reporting a legal requirement. The other eight Google accidents occured during earlier tests, according to Urmson.
Urmson wrote in his post that autonomous vehicles were not at fault in any of the 11 accidents.
“Even when our software and sensors can detect a sticky situation and take action earlier and faster than an alert human driver, sometimes we won’t be able to overcome the realities of speed and distance; sometimes we’ll get hit just waiting for a light to change,’’ Urmson wrote. He added that the accidents have given the company valuable information about driving behavior that will enhance their driverless car technology moving forward. For example, Urmson said the cars have been programmed to pause briefly at intersections when lights turn green to avoid collisions with drivers running red lights.
A person familiar with the reports of the accidents that have occured since September told the AP that two of the four crashes happened when the cars were in control, while a person was in the driver’s seat for the other two accidents. All crashes reportedly occurred at speeds under 10 miles per hour. While five other companies have permits to test driverless cars, none have reported any accidents.
The accidents will not stop Google from moving forward with their program. Urmson wrote: “We’ll continue to drive thousands of miles so we can all better understand the all too common incidents that cause many of us to dislike day to day driving — and we’ll continue to work hard on developing a self-driving car that can shoulder this burden for us.’’
John Leonard, roboticist and professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has been following Google’s program closely, and told Boston.com he has faith in the company’s commitment to making the safest product possible. “I am convinced from my ride in the Google car last summer, and by the public talks that I’ve seen by Chris Urmson and other members of the Google team, that Google’s self-driving car project is obsessed with safety,’’ he said. “I have great faith in how seriously the Google team is taking the issue of safety.’’
How to report driverless accidents, and who is to blame, are some of the thorny issues states and companies like Google have to hash out as autonomous vehicles gain traction.
California began issuing permits for companies to test driverless cars on public roads in September, and Nevada, Michigan, Florida, and the District of Columbia have passed laws to allow driverless cars on roads under certain circumstances. Currently, 48 self-driving cars are on public roads in the U.S., the AP reports.
A bill introduced to the Massachusetts Legislature this year would authorize the operation of autonomous vehicles without active control or monitoring by a human operator. If passed, the bill would require driverless vehicles to “have a means to engage and disengage the autonomous technology which is easily accessible to the operator,’’ and be able to alert the operator if there is a technology failure while operating autonomously.
Check out these weird looking driverless cars of the future in the UK:
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