Google has defended its autonomous vehicle trials in the US following a report from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles stating that four accidents have involved self-driving cars during the last eight months.
Three out of the four vehicles belonged to the technology giant, the fourth to parts supplier Delphi. Under Californian law, details of the accidents are confidential. According to Associated Press, two of the accidents took place while the cars were driving, while the other two accidents occurred when humans were behind the wheel.
Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car programme said that the firm’s cars have been involved in 11 accidents during the last six years.
Urmson claimed Google’s cars have covered 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving and “not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident”.
“Rear-end crashes are the most frequent accidents in America, and often there’s little the driver in front can do to avoid getting hit; we’ve been hit from behind seven times, mainly at traffic lights but also on the freeway,” Urmson said. “We’ve also been side-swiped a couple of times and hit by a car rolling through a stop sign. And as you might expect, we see more accidents per mile driven on city streets than on freeways; we were hit eight times in many fewer miles of city driving.”
“All the crazy experiences we’ve had on the road have been really valuable for our project. We have a detailed review process and try to learn something from each incident, even if it hasn’t been our fault,” he added.
Urmson also claimed that Google is “developing a good understanding of minor accident rates”, by identifying patterns of driver behaviour, such as jumping red lights and drifting between lanes, that are leading indictors of what he calls significant collisions.
“Those behaviors don’t ever show up in official statistics, but they create dangerous situations for everyone around them,” he added.
