Chris Urmson, the director of Google's self-driving car program, took to a blog post today to talk about how the company is approaching safety with its autonomous vehicles. Urmson notes that, so far, Google's self-driving cars have been involved in 11 "minor" accidents, none of which were caused by Google's vehicles themselves.From Urmson:
Over the 6 years since we started the project, we've been involved in 11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries) during those 1.7  miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel, and not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.
Urmson goes on to detail what the company has learned during its tests with its autonomous cars and how it has handled obstacles and safety hazards from other drivers. Overall, Urmson's examples place an emphasis on human error as the main culprit behind most automobile accidents, while highlighting the different bult-in safety features of Google's self-driving cars, such as sensors that keep track of other vehicles and pedestrians at a distance of almost two football fields.
Given that self-driving cars are still in their relative infancy, it makes sense that folks are concerned about their safety. However, Urmson's blog post shows that Google is very serious about addressing these safety concerns, and getting the technology right. For much more, you can check out Urmson's blog post in full from the source link below.