The future is the self-driving car. No matter what we’re doing, what else we might be working on, the driverless car is a huge deal for certain companies, and Google is leading the way on the self-driving car front. Google is actually testing self-driving cars, racking up tens of thousands of miles and testing on public roads around Mountain View, California. So far, the accidents have been the result of the errors of other people, but no one’s been hurt, until now. Google’s self-driving car was involved in its first injury accident.
Three Googlers were treated for minor whiplash after someone ran into the back of the driverless car at an intersection. The riders suffered minor whiplash, but no serious injuries due to the location of the collision and the speed at which it happened. Here’s the details on the car accident, right from a Google blog post.
“Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road. That’s a big motivator for us. The most recent collision, during the evening rush hour on July 1, is a perfect example. One of our Lexus vehicles was driving autonomously towards an intersection in Mountain View, CA. The light was green, but traffic was backed up on the far side, so three cars, including ours, braked and came to a stop so as not to get stuck in the middle of the intersection. After we’d stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17 mph — and it hadn’t braked at all.”
Tags: google, google driverless car, google self-driving cars, google car involved in injury accident, google car accident, google car hit by driver, three injured in google driverless car crash, lexus, mountain view, california
