no humans allowed

Terrible Human Drivers Can’t Stop Running Into Google’s Self-Driving Cars

View through car windshield, focus on coffee cups (blurred motion)
Photo: Ann Manner

Google announced on Thursday that when it comes to cars, the only thing to fear are those who steer themselves. On July 1, someone rear-ended one of the tech company’s self-driving cars. For the eleventh time. It marked the first time an injury was reported after an accident; those in the tricked-out Lexus SUV went to the hospital for minor whiplash. Google says that its cars have only gotten into 14 accidents in the past six years, and that humans — “distracted and not paying attention to the road” — were to blame for all of them. A Google car did rear-end someone back in 2011 … while it was out of self-driving mode. In a post on Medium about the crashes, Google smugly concludes, “We’ll take all this as a signal that we’re starting to compare favorably with human drivers.”

Humans Can’t Stop Running Into Self-Driving Cars