A Google car was hit by a careless human driver over the weekend. Luckily, only the car and human dignity were harmed in the accident.
On Saturday, an Interstate Batteries van ran a red light and collided into one of Google’s autonomous Lexus vehicles. Reports indicate that the human driver sped past the light and rammed the Google Car on its right side, proving to be an embarrassing episode for human motor functions. The driver was unharmed, though his mistakes will be another loss on the human versus machine driving scorecard.
Google released a detailed report about the incident on Sunday, making it clear that the Google car was not at fault. Google regularly releases reports on the self-driving cars in a move to create transparency around the several autonomous vehicles roaming Silicon Valley.
The Google Self-Driving car after a collision on September 24, 2016 in Palo Alto, CA
To be clear, this is not the first time one of Google’s self-driving cars have been in an accident. In February, a Google car steered itself into a bus, causing one of the first major accidents caused by the Google car itself. Beyond that one incident are reports of Google cars earning speeding tickets (for going too slow), and near-misses with other self-driving cars.
Read Google’s full statement about the incident below:
A Google vehicle was traveling northbound on Phyllis Ave. in Mountain View when a car heading westbound on El Camino Real ran a red light and collided with the right side of our vehicle. Our light was green for at least six seconds before our car entered the intersection. Thousands of crashes happen everyday on U.S. roads, and red-light running is the leading cause of urban crashes in the U.S. Human error plays a role in 94% of these crashes, which is why we’re developing fully self-driving technology to make our roads safer.
