Self-driving cars being tested by Google Inc. have been involved in 11 minor traffic accidents on Californian roads over the past six years, the company has revealed.
Google said its self-driving cars were ‘not once’ to blame for the collisions, which occurred during 1.7m miles of autonomous and manual driving with safety drivers behind the wheel.
The company revealed the figures this week after The Associated Press reported Google had notified the California Department of Motor Vehicles of three collisions involving its fleet since September.
Safety has been a key concern surrounding driverless cars, with trials currently underway in major UK cities including Milton Keynes, Bristol, London (Greenwich) and Coventry focussing on public perception of the technology.
The director of Google’s self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, said every accident involving the company’s vehicles resulted in ‘light damage’ and ‘no injuries’.
Google’s vehicles have been hit from behind seven times during testing on roads and highways ‘mainly at traffic lights but also on the freeway’, Mr Urmson wrote on Backchannel.
‘We’ve also been side-swiped a couple of times and hit by a car rolling through a stop sign. And as you might expect, we see more accidents per mile driven on city streets than on freeways. We were hit eight times in many fewer miles of city driving,’ he added.
Mr Urmson said the ‘crazy experiences’ had been ‘really valuable’ in developing an understanding of driver behaviour.
He said a self-driving car ‘has people beat’ on road awareness, with safety drivers routinely spotting people weaving out of lanes, reading and one even playing a trumpet.
Google’s cars have also be programmed to ‘pause briefly’ after traffic lights turn green in a bid to avoid drivers who ‘barrel impatiently or distractedly through the intersection’.
