Developing self-driving cars is the rage. Naturally, people want to know how safe they are.
So, Google GOOGL -1.12% is now posting monthly reports (PDF) on accidents. “Given the time we’re spending on busy streets, we’ll inevitably be involved in accidents; sometimes it’s impossible to overcome the realities of speed and distance,” Google said in its May report.
The report states that in the six years since the self-driving car project began, Google vehicles have been involved in 12 minor accidents during more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined. And here’s the operative sentence: “Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.”
Examples of accidents include one in 2010 when a Google Prius “autonomous vehicle” (AV) operating in manual mode was rear-ended in Mountain View, Calif. on Central Expressway. Another report describes an accident in February 2015, highlighting some of the dynamics between autonomous and manual mode when an accident occurs: “A Google Lexus model AV was traveling northbound on El Camino Real in autonomous mode when another vehicle traveling westbound on View Street failed to come to a stop at the stop sign at the intersection of El Camino and View Street. The other vehicle rolled through the stop sign and struck the right rear quarter panel and right rear wheel of the Google AV. Prior to the collision, the Google AV’s autonomous technology began applying the brakes in response to its detection of the other vehicle’s speed and trajectory. Just before the collision, the driver of the Google AV disengaged autonomous mode and took manual control of the vehicle in response to the application of the brakes by the Google AV’s autonomous technology.”
It’s worth noting that there are a disproportionate number of accidents in 2015 compared to the previous five years as more Google autonomous vehicles are on the road more frequently.
For this first report, Google is including summaries of all accidents since the start of the project in 2009. In future monthly reports, Google will provide info on accidents in that month.
