The First Car Crash To Occur At The Hands Of A Computer Has Happened

This isn’t the first time an autonomous car has crashed, but prior to this accident all autonomous accidents happened with a human inside. The robot driver was trying to merge into traffic on a busy Mountain View, California, street when it misjudged an oncoming bus driver.

Unfortunately for Google, this wasn’t the result of a glitch. It was the result of an actual decision made by the system. The self-driving software had judged that the bus was going to give the Lexus space to merge into its lane, but that space never came. What resulted was that the car hopefully darted in front of the bus only to get clipped. Despite the mishap, it isn’t time to start picketing autonomous cars. The accident was at a very low speed and damage was minimal. So compared to human pilots, autonomous vehicles still have a statistical advantage.