Self-driving cars keep getting into accidents

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Four of the 48 autonomous automobiles currently active on public roads in the state of California have been involved in accidents over the last eight months, according to media reports.

BBC News, citing records obtained from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, said that one self-driving car belonging to parts supplier Delphi and three owned by Google had been involved in incidents since the agency stated issuing permits for these vehicles last September.

Both firms have denied that their vehicles were to blame for the accidents, with Delphi telling the BBC that its self-driving car was hit at a crossroads while stationary and in manual driving mode. Google, meanwhile, said that its cars had never been the cause of an accident, and that their vehicles were rear ended in the majority of the “minor fender-benders.”

An anonymous source told the Associated Press that two of the accidents took place while the cars were in self-driving mode, and the other two occurred when the driver was in control of the vehicle. All four happened when the test automobiles were traveling less than 10 mph.

Google: Safety is our “highest priority”

A Google spokesperson told BBC News that safety was the company’s “highest priority,” and that since the start of its autonomous automobile program six years ago, the vehicles had driven nearly one million miles on freeways and city streets “without causing a single accident.”

Chris Urmson, director of the company’s self-driving car program, wrote in a blog post that the company’s self-driving cars had driven 1.7 million miles since its program started six years ago, and had been in a total of “11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries)” during that time. “Not once,” he added, “was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.”

Google has reportedly no public records from the accident, and the AP said that the California Department of Motor Vehicles said it could not release details from accident reports. However, Delphi sent the wire service an accident report from the incident its car was involved in back in October, showing that one of its test cars was indeed hit by another driver.

“A police report indicates the fault of the accident is with the second vehicle, not Delphi. No one was hurt in the incident,” a spokesperson from the auto parts firm told BBC News. That accident report showed that the front of the company’s 2014 Audi SQ5 was “moderately damaged” when it was “broadsided by another car while waiting to make a left turn,” the AP added.

Five other companies that have testing permits reported no accidents to the wire service.

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