Following the increased pressure and demand from the consumer-advocacy groups, Google has now launched a website which has been completely devoted to their robocars. This website is developed to report everything about the robocars including the accidents that involve theses vehicles.
Since the company has previously announced that they will all be revealing any incident details, this looks to be a u-turn taken by the tech giant. This website was launched on Friday and will be giving out details about any accidents but they will be ensuring to protect the identity of the drivers (human), who are required to ride along in the car that too according to the law. The website will also be providing some overview information of the Google’s robocar program apart from highlighting the behaviour of the vehicle in terms of adaptability in the daily routine traffic.
During the shareholders meeting, the co-founder of the company, Sergey Brin stated that they are quite confident keeping the information of the human drivers in the accidents private and protected. The company is not claiming that the car is all perfect but their aim is to win against the human drivers. We need to set the expectation that no vehicle is perfect.
The first monthly report of the cars by the company was released, which covered accident information dating back from the beginning of the project in 2009. The report highlighted that the robocars have been able to log more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous as well as manual driving altogether.
They have been involved in about 12 minor wrecks and none was attributed to the car. The company reported about the 13th car accident which happened when the car was rear ended. This can be the 8th time when something like this has happened. In America, the most common accidents are attributed to the rear end crashes which the driver in the front cannot avoid. The company reported that their cars have been hit from behind primarily at the traffic lights.
The May monthly report highlighted the behaviour of the cars in terms of it being highly cautious as well as its ability to predict as well as avoid wrecks in conditions which cannot be handled by human drivers.
The prototype vehicles will be out for testing in the public roadways in the hometown of the company in California. Self driving cars are rare and this has lead to the limitation of the vehicles in the controlled conditions and in their facilities. But they can be considered as the next wave of technology and it is inevitable for the business and consumers to start relying on it. Many huge played are investing and experimenting with this vehicle and trying to equip the same with the robotic skills to enhance the experience of the human drivers.