Google has revealed the first accident that one of its self-driving vehicles got involved in which landed the passengers in a hospital. The Lexus SUV car equipped with cameras and sensors was hit by a driver from Mountain View, California who was not paying attention to the road.
Three passengers, who are also employees of Google, were brought to the hospital including the driver who obtained neck and back pain. The victims were then released from the hospital and allowed to work after the accident which happened on July 1.
Chris Urmson, the head of Google's self-driving car program clarified that the incident was not a result of any malfunction of the car. He states that, "The clear theme is human error and inattention. We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers."
Urmson mentioned that the self-driving cars are usually hit by distracted drivers whom he assumes checking their phones. Google has invested so much on these high-tech cars believing that it is safer to use.
The cars underwent 1.9 miles of testing and 14 accidents were recorded in six years. In 11 of accidents, the cars are the ones being hit by a secondary vehicle. The tech company also pointed out that none of the incidents were caused by the cars except for the case in 2011 when an employee used one car that is not on self-driving mode and rear-ended another vehicle.
In addition, the distance covered during the testing period which started in 2009 is sufficiently long for Google to conclude that their sophisticated cars are safe to be used on the streets of California. Cbs19 interprets it as a distance similar to four round-trips from here to the moon.
More than 20 self-driving cars are currently running around the streets of Mountain View.
