Google’s self-driving cars are a big focus point for the company, but drivers and manufacturers alike are keeping their eyes on the safety of those autonomous vehicles. Fortunately for everyone (except maybe insurance companies) Google’s self-driving car program hasn’t caused any accidents over the 6 years and 1.7 million miles since it took to the road.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been any accidents where a Google car was involved, but none of the 11 recorded accidents were Google’s fault. To top that off, all 11 accidents that the self-driving cars were involved in were minor, so no one was injured. That’s pretty impressive, and seems far safer than what most human drivers can typically pull off.
Google’s research has also given a little insight into when crashes are most likely to happen. Out of the 11 times one of their cars was hit, 8 times were on city streets, while only 3 accidents happened on the freeway. Dealing with things like stop signs, intersections, and typical distractions seem to be the biggest culprit of minor vehicle accidents, and Google notes that. Too many people are distracted on their phones or by other things in their vehicles, which leads to drivers not paying attention at four-way stops or trying to rush to beat a red light. Google has developed some interesting ways to tackle those problems, like forcing their car to take a second pause when a light turns green to avoid getting hit by someone speeding through a red light.
Google also captured some pretty ridiculous things some drivers do, like driving on the wrong side of the road (seriously), sharply cutting across lanes to make a turn, and veering into other lanes in the middle of a turn. Google’s cars typically handle those situations very cautiously and probably much better than most human drivers, which explains the extremely low accident rate.
At the end of the day, this information really sums up how dangerous the human element is to driving. It’s much easier for a computer to make calculated, safe decisions, especially in a high-speed environment, especially compared to how people drive. It’ll be very interesting to see how Google plans to take this program further in the next few years.
source: Medium
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