One of Google’s self-driven cars was rear-ended at an intersection, which caused injuries to the passengers and to the driver of the other vehicle. This is the first time ever that a Google autonomous vehicle accident involved injuries.
Google’s self-driving car program head, Chris Urmson, reported the details of the collision in a blog post published Thursday. A Google autonomous vehicle was rear-ended at an intersection in the company’s headquarters community, Mountain View, California.
The accident reportedly had happened on July 1, involving a retrofitted Lexus sport utility vehicle.
Google has been modifying existing cars to build its fleet, which amounts to around 20 cars. A custom Google car is in the works, but only two are on the road.
According to Urmson’s account, the Google car was the third vehicle in line of cars driving through an intersection. While the light was green, the first car stopped to not block the intersection, and the second car and the Google car stopped as well. A fourth driver “slammed into the back of us at 17 mph — and it hadn’t braked at all,” Urmson wrote.
Urmson blames distracted driving as the cause of the accident — the combination of “human error and inattention.”
Three passengers inside the Google car reported minor, whiplash-like injuries. The Google employees were checked out at a nearby hospital and cleared to go back to work. The driver who reportedly rear-ended the vehicle complained of neck and back pain.
California’s traffic laws require a driver to be behind the wheel at all times, ready to take control if needed. Thus, employees of the tech giant are always along for the ride.
Police responded to the scene, but did not issue an accident report, according to Google.
Google claims its self-driving cars are safer
Google has invested heavily to become a pioneer of self-driving cars. The company believes this technology will be safer and more efficient than human drivers.
Until recently, Google had not made its accident record public, but in May, the company announced it would conduct monthly reporting.
Google cars have been involved in 14 accidents and 1.9 million miles of testing since the self-driving car program began in 2009, according to the company. The company says the autonomous cars have never been at fault in accidents.
There was a fender bender in 2011, where a staffer grabbed an autonomous vehicle to run an errand and rear-ended a car stopped at an intersection. In that case, human error was blamed, not the car that was in manual mode.
What about equipping the self-driving cars with a signal to prevent rear-end crashes? Google told CBC News that they’ve considered adding an honking sound to rouse drivers, except the company fears that would annoy the residents of Mountain View.
Considering that Mountain View is a small city with a population of about 75,000, a fleet of honking, self-driving cars would probably not be welcome.
