Self-driving cars are still in their infancy and will be years before we even see a hint of them being legalized for the roads. That being said with the technology still being relatively new, it isn’t surprising to learn that these self-driving cars do get into accidents from time to time, and according to Google, their self-driving car has recently gotten into an accident.
According to Jacquelyn Miller, a Google spokeswoman, it seems that it was just recently (last week) that the self-driving car got into an accident. However the good news is that it was not Google’s fault as the car was rear-ended while it was waiting at a traffic light in Mountain View which is where Google’s HQ was located.
In a statement released to ArsTechnica, “That’s two incidents just in the last week where a driver rear-ended us while we were completely stopped at a light! So that brings the tally to 13 minor fender-benders in more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving—and still, not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.” Google has also since created a website where they will upload monthly reports for the sake of transparency and disclosure.
It should be noted that of all the accidents the car has endured over the years since its inception, none of it was caused by Google, so if you’re still worried about self-driving cars, maybe you should be more worried about human drivers. In the meantime Google has toyed with the idea of creating external airbags that could potentially lessen the impact when hitting another vehicle or a pedestrian.
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