Here's Footage Of A Self-Driving Google Car Crashing Into A Bus

So far Google has blamed every self-driving car crash on human error, but this CCTV footage from a bus shows the first crash in which Google accepts its car was at fault

Darren Cassey

Updated: 10 Mar 2016

This isn’t the first time a Google self-driving car has been involved in a crash, but significantly it is the first time it has admitted fault. So far, it’s always been caused by a human driver crashing into the Google car, but as you can see here, this one comes down to the Google car misinterpreting the road.

You can read Google’s in-depth review of the incident on The Verge, but the general gist of it is that the Google car wanted to turn right, but found its path blocked by sandbags. It indicated left to drive around them, and thought the bus was slowing to let it out. It wasn’t, and the Google car found itself in the way. Fortunately nobody was hurt, but Google’s Lexus did suffer some minor damage to its front bumper.

This is proof that even a highly intelligent robot can’t predict other humans’ behaviour every single time, so teaching its cars to better interpret other road users will be key to Google creating autonomous cars that can co-exist with human drivers.

Sources: Jalopnik and The Verge

Comments

I’d say we’re still pretty far from driverless cars everywhere.

should’ve checked the blind spot, typical

Haha. Google said this was the future. Looks like it even makes human errors. Let us drive ourselves.

I guess you could say they were…BUSted;)

among the search terms in google one of the things they will never admit is “failure’

Are you kidding me ? Yeah google car made the mistake and moved over but the bigger jerk is the bus driver not letting him in.
Secondly, you’re not allowed to pass a car in that spot!!! It’s not like he was in a separate lane!
I side with google here. The bus and that GMC made an illegal pass.

Humans are the cause of all mistakes. By us making cars that would drive automatically still can’t fix our safety problem, it’s just more of a convenience. People are human, they will make mistakes.