Self-Driving Cars Never Caused Accidents, Says Google!

Google claims that their self-driving cars were never at fault for the accidents caused. Most of them were rear endings, and others were minor scrapes.

At the moment there are about 23 Lexus RX450h SUVs driving around California, and some think that Google is just sugar-coating the accidents that involved their self-driving cars, in order to continue testing them on public roads.

John M. Simpson, who is the Privacy Project Director for US organization Consumer Watchdog, has made repeated calls that Google needs to offer complete transparency, and that the big G needs to release all of the information regarding the minor incidents – ” We now know a few more details of what happened. The problem is that it’s Google’s version and they want us to take their word for it.”

At the moment, the incidents appear to be minor, but nobody knows for sure what Google is hiding. Why not just release all of the information to the public and get rid of these false allegations? Or maybe, they aren’t false at all, and Google is hiding some nasty things under its hood. Pretty shady if you ask me.

Simpson added that – ” Google is dribbling out bits information in the hope to silence legitimate calls for full transparency. They are testing on public roads and the public has a right to know exactly what happened when something goes wrong.”

Google’s on-going self-driving cars project spans over six years, with more than 1.8 million miles driven – at least, that’s what their May 2015 report states. Their vehicles were involved in 12 minor accidents. At first glance, that’s really not bad. Six years, almost 2 million miles, and only 12 minor accidents? Well, it’s like living in a utopia were almost everyone is paying attention to the road.

Consumer Watchdog claims that these minor accidents may in fact be caused by Google’s self-driving cars stopping too sudden – ” […] the vehicles tend to stop more quickly than human drivers expect.” But let’s face it, human drivers stop too sudden all of the time. This only means that the driver that was behind didn’t keep the distance required, and wasn’t paying attention to the road. The person driving behind is almost always at fault for rear-ending.

In a recent article written by one of my collegues, we found out that Google’s self-driving cars have a maximum speed capped at 25 miles per hour. The self-driving cars are also tested near Google’s HQ in California, Mountain View – they are accompanied by safety drivers.

Only time will tell if Google is actually putting all of us in mortal danger, or if these allegations are truly based on paranoia. I’m more inclined to believe the Consumer Watchdog’s claims, rather than the big shady G.

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Karen Jackson

Karen Jackson has always been passionate about technology. All the way through high-school she immersed herself in computers and web-design. Her ambitious nature helped her become a pro in Adobe Photoshop only by watching online videos and working with the program herself. This is also the program that she mostly uses in the creation of websites at her work-place. Technological innovation and gadgets that push the boundaries of what we are comfortable with have always fascinated her, so expect to see some weird gadget reviews coming from her.