It will take something more complex to crash a Google car

Aug 29, 2015 05:50 GMT  ·  By

A recent encounter between a confused cyclist and a Google self-driving car shows how much we need them on the road, starting yesterday.

Google self-driving cars have a reputation of not crashing into things, as the company highlighted in a report a few months ago.

They are safe because, let's face it, they don't have people behind the wheel. The driving is done by an AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithm that takes into account data from cameras mounted on the car, along with input from various sensors.

This creates the perfect driver, one that can analyze a million outcome possibilities with each passing second, and always choose the right course of action, even before human drivers ever get to notice problematic situations.

As The Washington Post found out, a recent meeting between a cyclist on his fixed-gear bike and a Google self-driving Lexus ended in a hilarious situation, but one that also increased our respect for Google's machinery.

Human safety above everything else

This is what the user Oxtox has written on the RoadBikeReview forum, while reaching a 4-way intersection with stop signs at the same time with a Google self-driving car:

"The car got to the stop line a fraction of a second before I did, so it had the ROW. I did a track-stand and waited for it to continue on through. It apparently detected my presence (it's covered in Go-Pros) and stayed stationary for several seconds. It finally began to proceed, but as it did, I rolled forward an inch while still standing. The car immediately stopped..."

He then adds, "I continued to stand, it continued to stay stopped. Then as it began to move again, I had to rock the bike to maintain balance. It stopped abruptly."

This happened for a few more times for the next 2 minutes, the cyclist starting, then stopping, while the car's AI was stopping itself to avoid a crash, even if it had the legal right to go through the intersection.

Something like this would have never happened with a human driver behind the wheel, and only goes to show how much emphasis has been put on road safety by Google's engineers.

And since we brought up the Google engineers, Oxtox also says, "The two guys inside were laughing and punching stuff into a laptop, I guess trying to modify some code to 'teach' the car something about how to deal with the situation."