http://news.yahoo.com/google-self-driving-car-involved-first-injury...
In a blog posted Thursday, the head of Google's self-driving car program, Chris Urmson, wrote that his SUVs "are being hit surprisingly often" by distracted drivers, perhaps people looking at their phones.
"The clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson wrote. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers.">>
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Distracted drivers need a Google vehicle!
The vehicle was pulled over by an officer of the LAPD after the officer noticed the vehicle driving erratically.
The vehicle failed a breathalyzer test, was driving on an expired license, didn't have evidence of liability insurance, was observed to be changing lanes in a careless manner without using turn signals and wasn't wearing a set belt.
The officer making the stop observed incoherent and disjointed images on the vehicle's display console and noted a trace odor of cannabis in his report. A court date is schedule for August 21.
The fact that the crashes, thus far, have all been caused by humans running their cars into the automated Google cars, rather than computer-driven vehicles running amok, starts to make the robots seem like better drivers than us. The flip side is the latest news that some Chrysler cars, like Jeeps, can be remotely hacked via the 'net and lose all manual control from inside the car.
Not sure why police would want to pull one over if the car is already obeying the law. Could you even call those distracted passengers drivers?
Maybe the free market is a bad idea
Robot cars are indisputably better than human drivers but worse than building public transit infrastructure.
On this topic: MIT Technology Review, Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill.
If in doubt, stop. Except to evade a 2X larger vehicle that can't stop in time.
Still, it's more ethical to what we already have.
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