Google’s self-driving cars have been involved in just a handful of accidents over the last six years that the internet giant has spent testing the innovative vehicles. All of the 11 accidents were reported to cause minor damage and didn’t cause any injuries to drivers, whatsoever. None of the accidents related to Google’s self-driving cars were actually responsible for the collisions; After being questioned for the minor crashes, Google quickly stated that every mishap was, in fact, caused by human error. Google claims that their driverless cars are safer than a normal human-operated vehicle, but what could be attributed to this relatively low accident rate? According to a motorcyclist, who regularly shares a daily commute with Google’s self-driving cars, the main reason behind the increased safeness, is that these automated vehicles drive at an extremely slow speed when compared to cars operated by humans.
Google is really confident that self-driving cars are the future of commuting and will easily overtake human-operated vehicles in virtually no time. Today, a motorcyclist who shares the road with at least 5 self-driving cars every day, made public several of his experiences with these new type of vehicles. In the blog post, the anonymous writer states he is currently living in Mountain View, California and is in no way affiliated with Google or any other company that is currently developing self-driving cars; he noted that the reason behind writing the post is just to inform what it actually feels like to be driving alongside Google’s innovative automobiles.
According to the anonymous motorcyclist, Google’s autonomous cars “drive like your grandma,” and by that he meant how the vehicles operate with enormous caution; always behind another car in stop lights, never speeding to get to the other side of an intersection before the light changes, and drive in an overly polite way. Even if the upcoming self-driving cars all have a lot of positive feedback, the reviewer also noted that while there are still human drivers problems will persist. One of the few negative things about self-driving cars, is that the way they operate might end up irritating the people driving alongside (or behind) them; this is due to how long the automated vehicles take to safely make a turn and accelerate. According to the reviewer, the people of California are ready to ban non-self driving cars, in order to make safer streets for everyone.