A US senator responsible for multiple smart-car laws has said it would be preferable to test self-driving vehicles on isolated test tracks rather than public roads, following Google’s first accident involving injuries in more than 1m miles of autonomous driving.
GALLERY: Google’s self-driving vehicles
Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who serves on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, made the comments at the opening of the University of Michigan’s Mcity track yesterday. The Senator gave an interview in which he said, “it’s better to start in a closed facility” such as the 32-acre Mcity, “where companies can conduct more extreme tests”. Mcity’s partners include auto-industry heavyweights such as Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Nissan and Honda.
GALLERY: Google’s self-driving vehicles
Google issued its first accident report last month on its six-year self-driving-vehicle project, logging all incidents to the end of May 2015. Since 2009 the company’s smart vehicles had covered over 1m miles in autonomous mode, but had been involved in only 12 accidents, all minor, each caused by human error, and all but one attributed to third-party fault.
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In June Google cars encountered two more accidents, both third-party collisions to the rear of the vehicle at road junctions, while the Google car was at rest. Eight of the 14 accidents Google has reported so far involved the vehicle being stationary or almost stationary at a road junction.
GALLERY: Google’s self-driving vehicles
The July report is due to be released in the first week of August, but according to media reports, the 1 July incident involving injuries was another rear-ending by a third party while the Google car was motionless. Three Google employees were hurt. This is the first report of injuries during the six-year project.
“Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road,” wrote Chris Urmson, director of Google’s smart-car project, in a blog post on Thursday. “The clear theme is human error and inattention”.
Senator Peters believes “it is an incredibly hazardous environment to be out on the streets”, but did admit that he had previously witnessed Google cars in action and was impressed with their “seamless” response to potential danger. In the interview he alluded to a journey he had taken in a Google car on a public road in California, in which “another vehicle crossed into our lane” and the autonomous vehicle was able to avoid a collision.
GALLERY: Google’s self-driving vehicles
But Peters insists city streets are fraught with more complexities than the freeway on which he took his demo drive. He insisted that sequestered testing would “allow us … to fully understand that very hazardous environment”.
