Google Self-driving Car Hits Local Bus In California - "We Accept Blame" Say Google

by Benson Agoha | Technology

A Google self-driving car was involved in a traffic accident after it hit another bus in California. It is the first of its kind - an accident that is the fault of artificial intelligence.

Google’s self-driving car hit the municipal bus in Silicon Valley prompting Google to modified the vehicle’s software in the aftermath of the incident. But the incident seems to provide the platform for answering some of the questions regulators want answered before they give the all clear to have such vehicles unmanned on the road.

"What if Technology Fails?" is one questions regulators asked auto-manufactures.

According to an RT report, the self-driving Lexus was trying to navigate around sandbags at an intersection near its headquarters in Mountain View, California when it struck the side of a bus.Google later filed a report with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) on February 23.

The vehicle, Google said, was traveling at less than two miles an hour, while the bus was moving at 15 miles an hour.

The car had its legally-required test driver in the driver’s seat when it happened, but the car-sitter thought that the bus would yield, so opted not to grab the wheel to make a correction.

The DMV posted an incident report on its website on Monday and in a statement, google said "In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved there wouldn't have been a collision."

Google said the incident prompted it to refine its software. "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."

According to a report on CBS Los Angeles, no one was injured.

Google says its self-driving car had predicted that the bus would yield to it when it pulled out to avoid sandbags alongside the road. The Google driver monitoring the car’s movements made the same assumption. But the bus did not yield, and the vehicles struck each other.

Google says the crash came from the same kind of negotiations and misunderstandings that take place between human drivers every day.

The tech giant says its cars will now have a better understanding that buses and other large vehicles are less likely to yield than smaller ones.

* Industry Week, ABC California, Today And Twitter contributed to this report.