Google disclosed a delicate information about their self-driving car. They revealed how many times the cars that car drive themselves needed a human to take over the control of the vehicle which somehow witness about the current reliability of their self-driving car programme.

Google has not provided the information on a voluntary basis. The data had to be disclosed to the public after the legislators from the state of California demanded that all motor companies have to provide real-time reports of their test results.

17 crashes, never at fault

All Google’s self-driving vehicles together have traveled over 1.3 million kilometers from 2012 onwards, the majority of them in California and Texas. Since then, not even one vehicle caused a traffic accident because of self-driving car fault. All the 17 crashes they’ve been involved were caused by humans.

In the last 14 months of testing Google counted 13 human interventions, when the driver had to take control of the steering wheel to prevent an accident. In other 69 cases, they had to take control of the vehicle to prevent dangerous driving.

A Ride in the Google Self-Driving Car

Google self-driving car reliability is high, but not high enough (yet)

In 272 cases, there were problems associated with the software. The vehicle did not recognize obstacles and also the pedestrian crossing. The report reveals that technology, although Google has already invested billions of euros, is not one hundred percent reliable yet. Errors can be justified by the fact that the driver can take control of the vehicle at any time when the vehicle is in automatic mode or believes that autonomous driving is not safe in certain situations.

Google also emphasizes how the reliability of autonomous vehicles advanced in the last 15 months and is much greater than it was. Google self-driving car project leader Chris Urmson says that the software will be improved to such an extent that no more errors will occur.

Many of the experts for automotive safety believe that technology of autonomous vehicles will improve road safety, which was also confirmed by a recent study of a self-driving cars and road accidents taken by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. The study revealed that the self-driving cars are already safer than human drivers. According to research, self-driving car causes 3.2 accidents per 1.000.000 kilometers traveled, while the US average is currently 4.2 accidents. But we must take into account all those cases where driver of self-driving car had to take over the steering wheel to prevent a crash-likely situation.

The number of crashes and human interventions must and will go down in the future. But it is also true that self-driving vehicles are given tougher conditions and are pushed into more complicated situations, which is of course the only right thing to do.

Google predicts that self-driving car could be ready for massive use by 2020.

Image credit: Google