Google's self-driving cars have been debated (and ridiculed) by many who doubt it will be a safe solution.
But according to one article Backchannel, rather their concerns are untenable.
According to the TNW broadcast, Gogle has revealed details of how her cars work, as well as some of the accidents she has had so far.
As the company says, the guiding principles it has given to stand-alone vehicles are able to reduce accidents caused by driver mistakes. The human error causes the 94% of accidents in the US, according to the National Road Safety Administration.
Η Google currently has over twenty cars on the road that they have traveled 1.700.000 miles on 6 years from the start of the project - both autonomously and with some manual intervention.
The company reports that they cover approximately 10.000 miles per week in stand-alone mode, which are the miles a typical American driver makes in a year.
In all these miles (mostly on the city streets) the vehicles were involved in 11 "minor" accidents, without injuries.
You can think of what you want from this number, but the key point is that none of the accidents so far have been caused by a bug of self-guided cars, according to Google.
As the company says, they were all the result of dangerous driving. On the streets of the city, an accident is much more likely to happen than on highways, and Google says it noticed very dangerous driving by others, including the use of mobile phones, and in one case a person while driving, playing and trumpet.
While Google reports that conflicts are not its own fault, it continues to try to learn from them, and to recognize models of bad practices of the driver.
For example, all of Google's cars will stop at a junction before the traffic lights become green for pedestrians, as we often see that vehicles are trying to go accelerating.
In one case, a cyclist did not notice that the car was about to turn.
The 360 cameras used by Google have noticed it and predicted its course. So the car waited until the cyclist passed.
The cyclist is the blue box, and the red line is the route that Google predicted would take.
Dimitris hates Mondays...
