Testing Google’s Driverless Cars Sounds Like a Nightmare

It turns out that Google’s self-driving cars still need some human help, according to a report filed this week to meet new regulations for the California DMV on autonomous vehicles.

According to the Verge, of the total 341 disengagements reported by Google, 272 were caused due to “failure of autonomous technology” – when the car’s sensors detected a fault and handed the control over to the tester, signaling a takeover through “distinct audio and visual signal”.

These events are anomalies, and Google says that “because the simulated contact events [possible crashes] are so few in number, they do not lend themselves well to trend analysis, but we are generally driving more between such events”. Google may, as Simpson says, use “our public roads as its private laboratory”, but as Google’s Urmson points out, “this stands in contrast to the hazy variability we accept in experienced human drivers- never mind the 16-year-olds we send onto the streets to learn amidst the rest of us”.

Nissan/Infiniti self-driving prototypes logged 1,485 miles on California roads from November 2014 to November 2015, with 106 incidents requiring disengagement of the automated systems. A spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.

It is mandatory for Google to submit these figures to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. “As we continue to develop our technology, the rate of safety significant disengagements has fallen even as we drive more autonomous miles on public roads”.

However, the newly released report indicated that despite the mentioned improvements, the Google auto is not able to drive completely autonomous. While the American company plans to build cars without any steering wheel or pedals, all the test data makes it pretty clear that it should probably not do that. Subsequent computer simulations found that if a human had not taken control, then 13 of the incidents would have ended in crashes.

Although the autonomous auto that Google developed has evolved since it has been first revealed until now, the vehicle is still in tests. The report also stated that the number of disengagements declined significantly during the period, going from once every 785 miles in the first quarter of testing, to once every 5,318 miles in the most recent.

“Our objective is not to minimize disengagements; rather, it is to gather, while operating safely, as much data as possible to enable us to improve our self-driving system”, the report, which was released January 13, notes.

Google’s report offered the most detail and explanation, by far. While two of these cases would have involved hitting a traffic cone, the other 11 would have been more serious.

Steven Levy of the blog Backchannel recently had the chance to go deep into Google’s driverless vehicle testing program. This and other data has been published by the technology company following a local regulator’s demand for the information.