Google's self-driving cars had 13 near-miss incidents: Report

Google has published its annual report about its self-driving car program where it analysed that if a human had not taken over, there likely would have been 13 “contacts” with other vehicles or objects. According to the report by  Google, the cars can also determine the severity of the rain, and just like human drivers they drive more cautiously in wet conditions when roads are slippery and visibility is poor. It also pointed out that for now, it is particularly stormy in California, and the cars automatically pull over and wait until conditions improve. 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. However, the report points out that Google has not mentioned a few things. When the car sees an accident, Google goes into a great detail as to why the collision occurred and who was at fault. Out of the total 341 total disengagements, 272 were reportedly due to the “failure of autonomous technology”, wherein the company detects a fault of some sort. Though, the company points out that at the moment, Google’s main focus to not to reduce the number of disengagements, but gather as much as data as to possible to improve the self-driving system respectively.