Google driverless car in another accident but other driver to blame

Accident indicates human drivers are a bigger menace than autonomous systems

A Google driverless car has suffered another crash, but the cause has been blamed on a human driving the other vehicle involved in the accident.

The crash occurred on 28 April at 5:35pm PDT in Sacramento, California, and was caused when Google's autonomous car, in this case a Toyota Prius, was hit in the rear by a human driven car.

"The Google AV [autonomous vehicle] came to a stop at the intersection of San Antonio Road, then, prior to making a right turn, began to gradually advance to get a better view of traffic approaching from the left on San Antonio Road," said the accident report filed by the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles.

"When the Google AV stopped in order to yield to traffic approaching from the left on San Antonio Road, a vehicle approaching at approximately 9mph from behind the Google AV collided with the rear bumper of the Google AV."

There were no injuries from the crash, but the incident follows a minor crash involving one of Google's driverless cars in April. In both cases the blame for the bumps appear to be firmly with other cars that hit Google autonomous vehicles.

In fact there have been very few incidents where Google's driverless cars were to blame for some of the minor crashes since the company began testing its autonomous systems on Californian roads. One of its cars had a near miss with another autonomous vehicle, where it would appear that Google's car was at fault.

Google's cars were involved in 13 traffic accidents between September 2014 and November 2015. This figure is impressive compared with the thousands of serious accidents and deaths caused by human drivers every year in the US and UK, and states a good case for allowing more driverless cars on public roads.

This is due to happen in the UK. The government has approved the testing of autonomous vehicles on British motorways, and car companies like Jaguar Land Rover are accelerating the development of driverless car systems.