Google's Driverless Car Got Into a Little Trouble this November

Google's monthly report on its self-driving car has been released for November and it shows how far the team, and car, have come. This month the car has learned about speed, right hand turns, and gotten itself in a collision.

All their 53 driverless cars practice on public roads, in order to learn how to negotiate the situations human drivers must face daily. This month the cars were improving their right hand turn.

The advancement in right hand turns stemmed from a minor collision, involving one of their Lexus models in the Mountain View area. The Google car activated its turn signal to turn, and then pulled up slowly to get a better view of the intersection. But the vehicle approaching from behind came to a stop behind the autonomous car and then rolled forward, colliding with it. No one was injured and minor damages to both vehicles were sustained.

On Friday, November 13, the car ran into a bit more bad luck befitting the superstition surrounding the day. Going 24mph in a 35mph zone, the car (or, rather, its operators) was pulled over but wasn't issued a ticket and was cautioned to pull over to the side if they were to notice traffic gathering behind them. Google's report explains why the they wanted a slow car:

"From the very beginning we designed our prototypes for learning; we wanted to see what it would really take to design, build, and operate a fully self-driving vehicle - something that had never existed in the world before. This informed our early thinking in a couple ways. First, slower speeds were easier for our development process. A simpler vehicle enabled us to focus on the things we really wanted to study, like the placement of our sensors and the performance of our self-driving software. Secondly, we cared a lot about the approachability of the vehicle; slow speeds are generally safer (the kinetic energy of a vehicle moving at 35mph is twice that of one moving at 25mph) and help the vehicles feel at home on neighborhood streets."

As noted by CNBC, the car has only been involved in 17 minor incidents during its six years of running the project, also noting that their car has never the cause of the incident.

Human interaction with the cars will always create a challenge for the driverless car to contend with, due to our sometime unpredictable nature. Some might think that having a human driver, as a backup, would be preferable. But the Associated Press tells Google's view on the matter, writing, "...involving humans would make its cars less safe. Google's solution is a prototype with a no steering wheel or pedals - human control would be limited to go and stop buttons."

By this point the project had racked up 1,320,755 miles in autonomous mode, meaning that Google's software was driving, averaging 10,000-15,000 miles per week on public streets. Using the data accumulated from November's trials, December's cars are sure to be just a little bit smarter.