Google's self-driving cars have crashed 11 times
But not one of them has been caused by the search engines autonomous vehicles in over 2.7m kmGoogle’s self-drive cars have been involved in 11 accidents over the last six years, according to the program’s director, Chris Urmson.
Urmson revealed on a tech news website that since testing began in 2009 a team of drivers and a fleet of 20 vehicles has been driving up to 16,000 kms per week in urban environments, racking up a total of 2.7 m kms.
"Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident," Chris Urmson told Backchannel's blog Medium.
"If you spend enough time on the road, accidents will happen whether you're in a car or a self-driving car," Urmson said.
In each accident with the autonomous vehicle no-one was injured.
The most frequent accident involved seven rear-end collisions while the Lexus RX450h was stationary at traffic lights. The majority of accidents also occurred in the city rather than on freeways.
Describing the accidents as all ‘valuable’ for the project Urmson vowed to try and learn something from each accident “even if it hasn’t been our fault.”
It’s not just Google that has been involved in a self-driving accident. Autonomous driving suppler Delphi was also involved in an accident with its Audi SQ5.
Again the Delphi car was not blamed for the accident as it was stationary at an intersection when it was struck by another car travelling over the median strip.
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