Google Self-Driving Cars: Company will Publicly Report Accidents on Website [Watch]
Google will start making its self-driving car accident reports public on a special website, the company announced Friday, according to USA Today.
After reports of its self-driving vehicles being involved in accidents, Google felt it was necessary to start releasing details from any accidents with self-driving cars. In years of testing on roads near its Mountain Valley, California, headquarters, several accidents occurred.
The website will provide details of any accidents, but will remove the human-driver details from the reports. The website will also provide information on how the vehicles are responding to different traffic situations they face. These vehicles, by law, must be accompanied by a Google driver.
Google plans to start testing its pod-shaped driverless cars on city streets this summer. The company already has heavily modified Lexus SUVs that are gathering data and being tested on roads. In almost six years, Google has tested self-driving cars for 1.8 million miles. So far, the cars have been involved in 13 accidents, according to reports submitted by the company to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Google's self-driving car project lead Chris Urmson said in a blog post that all of the accidents involving the self-driving cars were the fault of other drivers and not of the self-driving cars. Many of the accidents were ta result of other drivers rear-ending self-driving cars at stoplights.
"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," wrote Urmson. "We've been hit from behind seven times, mainly at traffic lights but also on the freeway. We've also been side-swiped a couple of times and hit by a car rolling through a stop sign."
The driverless cars include an onboard Google employee. The employees have noticed many distracted drivers during test drives.
"Our safety drivers routinely see people weaving in and out of their lanes," he wrote. "We've spotted people reading books, and even one playing a trumpet."
The first report released by Google shows the cars' learning capabilities. These cars are able to detect when an emergency vehicle is coming or when a cyclist drifts into their lane at night.
"A cyclist on the left had entered the left turn lane, but veered back into our path to continue straight across the intersection," the post said. "At the same time, the cyclist on the right entered the intersection, traveling against the flow of traffic. That cyclist then took a sudden left turn, coming directly at us in our lane.
Watch this video to see what it's like to ride in a self-driving car.
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