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According to an article by the AP - via an ad-free site several of the self driving cars licensed to drive in California have been involved in accidents.
Most are slow speed accidents, apparently with no injuries.
Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars now rolling around California have gotten into accidents since September, when the state began issuing permits for companies to test them on public roads. Two accidents happened while the cars were in control; in the other two, the person who still must be behind the wheel was driving, a person familiar with the accident reports told The Associated Press.
Three involved Lexus SUVs that Google Inc. outfitted with sensors and computing power in its aggressive effort to develop "autonomous driving," a goal the tech giant shares with traditional automakers. The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had the other accident with one of its two test vehicles. Google and Delphi said their cars were not at fault in any accidents, which the companies said were minor.
Neither the companies involved, nor the State of California will release details of these accidents, which rankles some critics.
Four accidents involving these 50 cars in 8 months may seem a little high. Google's 23 cars have driven 140,000 miles in that time and racked up 3 accidents all by them selves. That is an order of magnitude higher than the National Transportation Safety Board's figures of 0.3 per 100,000 for non injury accidents. However the NTSB doesn't collect all fender bender accidents.
The article says that none of the other states that permit self driving cars have any record of accidents.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 11 2015, @09:46PM
A perfect example of this is backing out of a driveway.
An advantage that an autonomous vehicle could have is if you can include things like radar to detect other cars and objects.
You don't need an autonomous vehicle for this, you can go out and buy a car like this right this minute, for around $25-30k. A bunch of cars, including the Mazda3 (higher-end packages only), have blind-spot detection warning systems which use radar in the back bumper, and because of this, have the additional feature of sounding an alarm if you're backing out and it detects any cross traffic.