Google Reports Self-Driving Car Accident #12

Google has revealed that one of its self-driving cars has been involved in a vehicular accident, though it was not the fault of the autonomous car — rather, a person-driven vehicle rear ended one of Google's self driving cars while it was stopped at a red light. Concerns about the safety of driverless cars has been around for a long time — far longer than current self-driving car efforts —- and some view incidents like this with a knee-jerk reaction. Still, of the driverless car incidents that have been reported, very few are the fault of the car itself.

This makes accident #12 for Google's self-driving cars, of which the company recently revealed that there had been 11 accidents with its autonomous vehicles over more than half a decade. Google hasn't released records about the accident, but has made a lengthy statement on them, largely pointing toward minor scuffles and human effort.

The accident is said to have happened last week, though where exactly it took place hasn't been detailed. The information was revealed by Google's Sergey Brin during the company's shareholder meeting. When pressed about releasing the accident reports, Brin expressed that the company is "open to that", but hasn't proceeded further on that point.

Seven or eight of the Google self-driving car accidents are said to have been the result of being rear-ended, two of them were incidents where the car was hit while moving, and one happened when a Google worker was controlling the car and accidentally rear-ended another person-driven car.

SOURCE: Autoblog