Tennessee motorists may have heard that for the first time, a Google self-driving car was in a crash that it caused. Other Google automated vehicles have been in accidents before, but they were all the fault of other drivers. The accident took place in Mountain View, California, where Google has its headquarters, and involved a city bus. However, no one was injured.
According to Google, the car was about to turn right, but after getting into the far right lane, the vehicle detected sandbags and moved to the center of the lane. A bus ended up striking the left side of the vehicle. The Google test driver believed the bus was going to yield, and the bus driver assumed the same of the Google car, which is why neither attempted to avoid the accident.
The accident took place at a very low speed; the Google car was going just 2 mph and the bus was going 15 mph. There was only light damage to the Google car, but it was not reported if there was any damage to the bus. Google stated that it will be looking into changing driving software to prevent future accidents of this type.
This incident indicates that motor vehicle collisions may still be quite common even if there are more self-driven cars on the road. Personal injury attorneys are likely aware that some of the companies that are developing autonomous technology have indicated that they would bear responsibility if one of their vehicles caused an accident due to a software glitch.
