Google co-founder Sergey Brin says he sees little reason to release the accident reports involving the Internet company’s self-driving cars because he believes there’s nothing new in documents withheld to protect the privacy of other motorists.
Brin, who oversees Google’s fleet of self-driving cars, outlined his rationale Wednesday during a sometimes-testy exchange with a long-time critic at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Mountain View, California.
As part of his effort to show Google has nothing to hide, Brin disclosed that one of the company’s self-driving cars was rear-ended at a traffic signal during the past week. With that collision, Google’s self-driving cars have now been involved in 12 accidents while covering more than 1.7 million miles over the past six years, according to the company.
The self-driving cars have never been at fault, according to Google, though a company employee was in control at the time of one crash. “We don’t claim that the cars are going to be perfect,” Brin said. “Our goal is to beat human drivers.”
Google is planning to begin testing the latest version of its self-driving car around the streets of Mountain View and other nearby public roads this summer. About 25 of the pod-like, two-seat vehicles initially will be cruising around at speeds topping out at 25 miles per hour.
Google founder defends accident records of self-driving cars Tech2 Mobile
