Most accidents involving Google's self-driving vehicles are due to human error.
Google it will publish updates on a monthly basis, providing information on the latest developments in the project.
Today, the company has an “army” of 32 self-driving vehicles – 23 modified Lexus SUVs that drive on the roads around Mountain View, California, and 9 concept cars that are still under development and their driving is limited only to closed test tracks.
[alert variation=”alert-info”]More than 1,000,000 miles have been driven using Google's automated driving technology, with an average of about 10,000 new miles covered each week.[/alert]
The report also provides valuable information about road accidents in which Google cars have been involved.
So far, the company's self-driving vehicles have been involved in a surprisingly low number of accidents – just 12 in six years – but none of them were due to a fault in the car's driving software.
Seven of the twelve accidents occurred during autonomous vehicle operation and were caused by other drivers crashing into Google's vehicles while they were in motion.
The remaining five accidents were caused when the vehicles were under the guidance of Google drivers and the self-driving software was disabled: There are four cases where the car was hit from behind and the Google employee was not at fault for the accident, while the fifth accident was caused by a “careless” and “rushed” Google employee who “borrowed” one of the self-driving cars to run on a whim and managed to crash into a car stopped in traffic.
