Google Self-Driving Car Hits a Bus

[engine]

In this instance, the speed was low, but the self-driving car decided the bus was letting it out of a junction, which, apparently, it was not.

In a statement, Google said: "We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved, there wouldn't have been a collision.

"That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that." Google Self-Driving Car Hits a Bus [bbc.co.uk]

[toidi]

How big of them to bear some of the responsibility for running into a bus.

[tangor]

Call a lawyer! Call a lawyer! ...

Until there are more machines on the road than humans (as drivers) it will always be the machine's fault.

Some years in the future the headline will be:

"Human borks transportation grid, bad merge" or "Wet work gums up traffic"

[Shepherd]

I would have liked to have seen this actually go down, I'm just not getting it right now, surely one of the first rules in the driving algo has to be "car may not try to occupy a space that another vehicle is already in". If I try to change lanes in my non-autonomous vehicle with blind spot warning the thing goes nuts.

[engine]

This is the unexpected occurring, and the software could not handle that. The software expected another autonomous vehicle to "give way" and let it out. Google needs to build in the human factor.

[nomis5]

It was only a small bus. Anyone can ocassionally miss (or rather hit) a bus.

Someone I once knew many years ago drove into a bus, but then again, he was pissed out of his head.