Google suffered a small setback after one of their driverless cars was involved in a crash with a bus last month. Thankfully no-one was hurt but that doesn't mean that Google are any less red-faced. A Google car crashing is by no means a first but this may be the first crash it has caused. As you can imagine Google have taken this matter very seriously and will meet with DMV to analyse the incident and see who is to blame.
The occupant in the Google car chose not to override the autonomous system as he thought the bus would slow down the let the car out but this did not happen resulting in a collision. Google said: "We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved, there wouldn't have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that."
In fairness, if there anything like the buses in the UK then they can be quite unpredictable! Google have said it has now refined it's self-driving algorithm and continued by saying: "From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles, and we hope to handle situations like this more gracefully in the future."
I've got to be honest, I'm not sold on driverless cars, give me all the statistics in the world but I'm not keen on having a machine in charge of my car. First driverless cars next we'll have a scene from Terminator. I know, I'm being silly and obtuse but my views remain the same. I'm not saying that won't succeed, I'm just not sure if I could ride in one.