With heartfelt apologies to any robot overlords who may be reading this, but your plans for world domination have hit their first snag.
Although they have been, up until now, surprisingly reliable forms of transportation, there has been a healthy amount of skepticism surrounding Google’s self-driving cars, which have been going through road test and actual public use in northern California since 2012. The Google cars, 23 in all, have been involved in about 15 minor accidents to date, but in each case, it was the human driver that was at fault, and not the driving technology.
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As of today, however, according to CNET, Google has admitted blame in its first self-driving car accident. The details of the accident are a bit mundane, apologies to those hoping for flames and mayhem. A self-driving car was attempting to make a right turn when its path was blocked by a pile of sandbags. It waited patiently for other cars to pass before backing up to get around them. A bus, however, traveling at 15 mph, was unable to yield for the little egg-shaped techno-wonder, and the car, traveling a 2 mph, backed into the side of the moving bus.
The car was slightly damaged, hurting its wheel, fender, and a driving sensor.
Google issued a statement declaring at least partial blame in the incident. In its monthly report, they were disheartened, but determined to fix the error. In their report they said:
“This is a classic example of the negotiation that’s a normal part of driving — we’re all trying to predict each other’s movements. In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved there wouldn’t have been a collision. 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.”
Google has been very cautious about these new cars, eager to prove how well they work. Google must report their accident fidings to the DMV, as well as any incidents where the human driver in a self-driving car had to take control in order to avoid an accident. The reliability of said reports are, however, a bit dubious. For the time being, Google has altered their cars to know that buses may not yield to them.
Top Image: Google
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
