One of Google’s autonomous cars (Toyota Prius model) was in a little fender bender on Friday, August 5th. The twist is, the car was driven by a driver at the time of the accident.
Google released this statement, “Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car. [The autonomous cars] have now traveled more than 160,000 miles without incident.”
One of Google’s autonomous car effort project leaders, Sebastian Thrun, said an increase in the accuracy and safety of the car would come from a networking of all cars on the road. He said at the TED conference this past spring, “Do you realize that we could change the capacity of highways by a factor of two or three if we didn't rely on human precision on staying in the lane but on robotic precision, and thereby drive a little bit closer together on a little bit narrower lanes and do away with all traffic jams on highways?"
I do not know a single person who has not been involved in a driving incident. Though giving up control to be the safest one can be will be hard to sell to the general public, I do hope to see computer controlled streets in my lifetime.
Cabe
