The safety of driverless cars has been called into question in recent weeks, but now Google has looked to rubbish speculation of high crash rates.
According to the search giant – one of the leading forces in the self-driving car movement – its autonomous vehicles have covered more than 1 million miles on public roads without ever causing a collision.
What’s more, the company has claimed driverless vehicles are so safe that they could help eradicate fatalities on roads in the near future.
“The reason we work on driverless cars, is because it’s something people do every day,” Google’s Senior Vice President of Products, Sundar Pichai, said during the firm’s Google I/O keynote today.
He added: “In the US, just last year, there were 33,000 deaths. That’s almost 100 people who die on roads every day.
Bigging up the company’s autonomous efforts so far, he stated: “Our Lexus hybrid vehicles have now driven more than 1 million miles autonomously, without a single incident being caused by our self-driving cars.
“The car uses computer vision to navigate safely.”
Related: Driverless Cars: Everything you need to know
Just because Google’s cars haven’t caused an incident doesn’t mean they haven’t been involved in the odd prang or two.
Earlier this month, the firm revealed its driverless automobiles have been involved in 11 accidents over the past 6 years, although all were the result of human error.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
