Google’s self-driving car strikes a bus in California

One of Google’s self-driving cars undergoing testing struck a public bus on a Silicon Valley Street this past Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. The fender-bender appears to be the first time one of the tech giant’s vehicles caused a crash during testing.

Google accepted some responsibility for the collision, when one of its Lexus SUVs equipped with sensors and cameras hit the side of a bus near the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. According to the accident report Google wrote and submitted to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, no one was injured. 

One of Google's self-driving Lexus cars. Image source: Google.

The crash occurred when the SUV intended to turn right off a major boulevard, when it detected sandbags around a storm drain at the intersection. The right lane was wide enough to let some cars turn and allowed others to go straight, but the Lexus needed to slide its left within the right lane to get around the obstruction. When it made its turn, the car was going 2 MPH, and that’s when its left front side struck the bus, which was going straight at 15 MPH.

According to Google, the car’s test driver, who under state law must be in the front seat to grab the wheel if needed, thought the bus would yield and did not have control before the collision.

The head of Google's self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, said in an interview that he believes the Lexus was moving before the bus started to pass.  

“We saw the bus, we tracked the bus, we thought the bus was going to slow down, we started to pull out, there was some momentum involved,” Urmson told The Associated Press. He acknowledged that Google's car did have some responsibility, but said it was “not black and white.”  

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority said none of the 15 passengers or the driver of the bus was injured. There may never be a legal decision on fault, especially if damage was negligible — as both sides indicated it was — and neither Google nor the transit authority pushes the case.  

But still, the collision could be the first time an autonomous Google car caused a crash.  

A critic of Google's self-driving car efforts said the collision shows that the tech company should be kept from taking to public streets with self-driving prototypes without a steering wheel or pedals. Google sees that as the next step for the technology, and has pressed California's DMV and federal regulators to authorize cars in which humans have limited means of intervening.

Source: phys.org