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

09 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

Ethans next car lol

Cut the kid some slack! Look at the bright side though… It did signal!

Google’s self driving car would have no hope in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico. Bus drivers there are next to insane.

Yee

“even a highly intelligent robot can’t predict other humans”. Well, while we humans can’t understand other so called humans I wonder how a robot would ever!!

This is BS. Driverless cars were invented years ago.
They’re called Taxis. (James May)

Fair enough but I can’t help but think too much attention is being given to this. This is the first accident in years. Considering how many human accidents occur on a daily basis I hardly find this to be a big deal.

Autonomous running on same environemtnt w/ human drivers or pedestrians will be ever a risk. 20 years of intensive development is still needed to accomodate this.

To be fair, its it’s first crash in over 1,300,000 miles of driving. I had my first fender bender in my first 1,000 miles. All of us had a bump or a scrape no matter how small.