DMV Report: Self-Driving Car Hit Bus During Google Test Run
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An accident report filed with California's Department of Motor Vehicles says a self-driving car being tested by Google collided with a public bus on Valentine's Day.
The report (PDF) was written by Google, which has been testing two dozen Lexus SUVs outfitted with sensors and cameras near the tech firm's Silicon Valley headquarters. It was posted Monday on the DMV website.
Google wrote that its car was trying to get around some sandbags on a city street when its left front struck the right side of the bus. The car was rolling at 2 mph, the bus at 15 mph.
No one was injured.
Google said it clearly bears some of the responsibility for the Feb. 14 crash between the car and a city bus in Silicon Valley because if its car hadn't moved, there wouldn't have been a collision.
Google says its self-driving car had predicted that the bus would yield to it when it pulled out to avoid sandbags alongside the road. The Google driver monitoring the car's movements made the same assumption. But the bus did not yield, and the vehicles struck each other.
Google says the crash came from the same kind of negotiations and misunderstandings that take place between human drivers every day.
The tech giant says its cars will now have a better understanding that buses and other large vehicles are less likely to yield than smaller ones.
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