Google’s self-driving cars have been rear-ended and side-swiped by human drivers while navigating Bay Area roads and freeways, but it’s never been the autonomous car’s fault, the company’s chief of driverless cars said in a defense of the technology Monday.
Earlier on Monday, the Associated Press reported that there have been four accidents involving self-driving cars since September, when California’s Department of Motor Vehicle begin issuing permits to companies that want to test vehicles on public roads (which Google had already been doing for several years). Three of the accidents involved Lexus SUVs that Google outfitted with self-driving software, the AP said. A fourth involved a test vehicle operated by Delphi Automotive.
Without making any reference to the AP report, the head of Google’s self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, published an essay in Medium’s Backchannel on Monday afternoon boasting of Google’s record.
“Over the 6 years since we started the project, we’ve been involved in 11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries) during those 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel, and not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident,” Urmson wrote.
Above: U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt listened earlier this year to Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car project, discuss the two-seater prototype vehicle at the Google campus in Mountain View. (Karl Mondon/Staff)
