Google self-driving car was in a rear end crash and people got injured... Guess who is in fault?

[jos]

A Lexus SUV with sensors and cameras installed by the tech giant was rear-ended in Google's home city of Mountain View, California, where more than 20 prototypes have been self-manoeuvring through traffic.

The three people on board, who complained of minor whiplash injuries, were checked at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain.

According to an accident report Google filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Google's SUV was travelling at about 15mph in self-driving mode behind two other cars as the group approached a junction with a green light.

The first car slowed to a stop so as not to block the junction as traffic on the far side was not moving. The Google car and the other car in front of it also stopped.

Within about a second, a fourth vehicle hit the rear of the Google car at about 17mph. On-board sensors showed the other car did not brake.

The driver of that car reported "minor neck and back pain". The SUV's rear bumper was slightly damaged, while the vehicle that struck it lost its front bumper.

This is the 14th accident in six years and about 1.9 million miles of testing, according to the company.

Google has said that its car has not caused any of the collisions, though in 2011 an employee who took a car to run an errand rear-ended another vehicle while the Google car was out of self-driving mode.

Google said

Although we don’t like getting hit, there’s a silver lining here. We all want to know how self-driving cars are measuring up against their human counterparts, but the statistics we need to do this simply aren’t ordinarily gathered. National crashes-per-miles-driven rates are currently calculated on police-reported crashes. Yet there are millions of fender benders every year that go unreported and uncounted — potentially as many as 55% of all crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Googles car is never at fault.

Source: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/crouch-google-selfdriving-car-has-first-injury-accident-31383690.html

https://medium.com/@chris_urmson/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-chapter-2-8d5e2990101b

[Syntaxvgm]

Not even at fault? The title makes it sound like the car caused injury 

 

 

 

 

I see it now 

 

"Self driving car gets in accident, self driving cars are dangerous!"

 

Probably Huff Po or Gawker 

 

 

Seriously though that title.

That means I've had my first injury accident. 

I guess my car shouldn't have been wearing that bumper, it made the van hit it. 

(Don't blame the victim)

 

edit 

title change =)

[Blueprint]

Not even at fault? The title makes it sound like the car caused injury 

 

 

 

 

I see it now 

 

"Self driving car gets in accident, self driving cars are dangerous!"

 

Probably Huff Po or Gawker 

It seems quite misleading. But apparently so.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Hmm I mean it has to happen eventually...

[Enderman]

The stupid people driving behind the google car were probably too mesmerized by the fact that it was self driving

So they didnt brake

Stupid humans

[Enderman]

Hmm I mean it has to happen eventually...

Well it hasnt yet...so thats good news

[Oshino Shinobu]

The fact that the other car rear ended the Google SUV so soon after it had stopped, and at around 20MPH just shows that the other car was following too closely and not paying attention. 

 

The issue is that people will see that driverless cars have had accidents, regardless of who's at fault, and then assume that they're dangerous, even though they are proving to be much safer. 

 

All it will take is an irresponsible driver with a kid in the car to have a serious collision with a driverless car and a lot of people will go crazy and want driverless cars banned without considering the proven safety improvements over human drivers. 

[handymanshandle]

While I still think that there should be some sort of happy medium between fully autonomous personal vehicles and human driven personal vehicles, certainly self driving cars are not dangerous and all they have to do is be better at driving than humans. Which they are. Though what if there's away to meet somewhere in the middle of self driving cars and human driven cars. Like maybe if a driver is drunk the car would drive itself and the drunk passenger/driver to a preset location (most likely the driver's home) Similar story for sleepy drivers instead the car will drive itself to the nearest rest stop or continue to the destination by itself until the driver is fully rested. I mean there are many ways to keep humans sort of in control of their own car. I don't think it's exactly convenient to have to type in a destination every time you want to drive somewhere that's too far to walk to or you're stopping somewhere before you actually start the drive.

 

Honestly the goal in everything should be to find a happy medium regardless of how long or hard it is to get there.

[Darren]

Terrible click bait title... 

[Sam Z Man]

I just want self driving cars to become required after I die, because I want to have fun with cars when I retire.

[SImoHayha]

Please change the damn title would you ? It pisses me off when I see titles with false information  " Google self driving car has first injury accident " Most people are going to think the article is about how Google finally fucked up and now they can go say that " SELF DRIVING CARS ARE DANGEROUS"

[Curufinwe_wins]

The fact that the other car rear ended the Google SUV so soon after it had stopped, and at around 20MPH just shows that the other car was following too closely and not paying attention.

The issue is that people will see that driverless cars have had accidents, regardless of who's at fault, and then assume that they're dangerous, even though they are proving to be much safer.

All it will take is an irresponsible driver with a kid in the car to have a serious collision with a driverless car and a lot of people will go crazy and want driverless cars banned without considering the proven safety improvements over human drivers.

This sounds like a a lot of the arguments against nuclear. When people forget more people died in direct fossil fuel related accidents (not including automobiles) in the last month than have died in the history of nuclear power (60 years). Obviously not counting bombs on either side.

7900000 GWh per fatality (and that assumes linear no threshold theory which is a medically refuted extremely large overestimate of radiation damage) for nuclear.

Coal 140 GWh per fatality

Solar 2500 GWh per fatality

Wind 21600 GWh per fatality

Natural Gas 51800 GWh per fatality

Hydro 463200 GWh per fatality

/endrant

[Oshino Shinobu]

This sounds like a a lot of the arguments against nuclear. When people forget more people died in direct fossil fuel related accidents (not including automobiles) in the last month than have died in the history of nuclear power (60 years). Obviously not counting bombs on either side.

7900000 GWh per fatality (and that assumes linear no threshold theory which is a medically refuted extremely large overestimate of radiation damage) for nuclear.

Coal 140 GWh per fatality

Solar 2500 GWh per fatality

Wind 21600 GWh per fatality

Natural Gas 51800 GWh per fatality

Hydro 463200 GWh per fatality

/endrant

I think with Nuclear, it's because the death rate isn't consistent. It's safe when it's going right, but if something goes bad, it can be devastating, all at once, which makes it seem like more people are dying from it. 

[jos]

Fixed title for you guys .. But I don't know what was wrong with old one.. If some car hit me .. I will tell "I was in an accident " that doesn't mean I caused it

[Curufinwe_wins]

I think with Nuclear, it's because the death rate isn't consistent. It's safe when it's going right, but if something goes bad, it can be devastating, all at once, which makes it seem like more people are dying from it.

which is a funny argument as well because even Chernobyl (an accident of a scale that cannot happen again and couldn't have happened anywhere else even then, yet linear no threshold puts total death tolls under 300 people and even at the crazy person level of say 4000...) doesn't rank anywhere near to the scale of other disasters...

People seem to forget that the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that caused the fukashima disaster killed 16000 people in the country with the world's most stringent earthquake building codes.

The sick and twisted truth isn't that nuclear (airplanes for ages also suffered this fate for ages but their stigma has been decreasing over time.) even kills more people at a time than other energy sources, but rather we EXPECT accidents to happen and people to die working with fossil fuels or hydroelectric and that means when it happens no one gets upset.

See Dark Knight for the Jokers more than a little bit truthful line.

“If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all ‘part of the plan’. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”

I understand this sort of double standard is exceedly common in life and particularly stigmatized technologies, but it doesn't make it any less hypocritical.

[TacticlTwinkie]

So someone else rear-ended a self driving car. The Google car was not at fault whatsoever. How is this even news?

[Curufinwe_wins]

So someone else rear-ended a self driving car. The Google car was not at fault whatsoever. How is this even news?

no idea we don't give two shits about regular car accidents. But hey GOOGLE!

[zacRupnow]

Every time one of Google's cars is involved in an accident it is the fault of a person. Machines can't be a problem without a person.

[Noctus]

Fixed title for you guys .. But I don't know what was wrong with old one.. If some car hit me .. I will tell "I was in an accident " that doesn't mean I caused it

 

It still read's as if the google car caused the argument ...

[dragosudeki]

Google car got rear ended as a line of cars came to a stop. Was expecting an article about an actual crash. Current title is just a copy of the article's title, but I feel the article had a bias against self driving cars. Makes it sound like the problem is Google's car, when Google is actually looking for ways to help other drivers since this scenario is pretty common even with people driving.

[Trik'Stari]

I've been in a head on collision where both vehicles were travelling double that speed.....you don't have whiplash. Not to mention rear-ending another vehicle is AUTOMATICALLY YOUR FAULT, as far as the law is concerned.

 

I predict a 90% chance that these people turn out to be nothing more than scam artists looking to make money off of a giant corporation.

[Stuff_]

Yeah, driverless is the way of the future. We're too distracted, assuming driving at 70 MPH while hardly paying attention is safe. 

If everyone owned a driverless car, which knows all it's surroundings, you better believe there would be almost zero accidents.

[Lazmarr]

Title still seems click bait.... >.>

[Nineshadow]

Clickbait title.

 

"A car hit a Google self-driving car while it was stationary. The guy in the car which hit the Google one got injured. Conclusion? Self-driving cars are Satan's work!"

[Syntaxvgm]

Title still seems click bait.... >.>

 

 

Clickbait title.

 

"A car hit a Google self-driving car while it was stationary. The guy in the car which hit the Google one got injured. Conclusion? Self-driving cars are Satan's work!"

despite the effort fo the title change, I think I still have to agree

 

"google say 'not their fault'

Sounds like google is trying to dodge responsibility

You are NEVER at fault if you get rear ended, especially when you are stopping for cars in front of you. And it's kinda no more news than if I ran into  a parked self driving car.