Latest Google Cars Crash Report

First accident reported since August but Google’s robot drivers maintain a spotless no-fault record. In the latest incident, a human rear-ended a Google Car.

Map of all Google Car Incidents Reported by Google

Note: Silk has been discontinued as of Dec. 15th 2017 so links are broken and visualizations are static. Will replace them asap.

On the 2nd of November, a Google Lexus SUV was rear-ended at the intersection of Clark St. and El Camino Real in Mountain View, California. This marked the end of a long streak of accident-free driving by Google’s robotic vehicles. I pulled this data from Google’s official reports of crash and accident data, which are mandated by the state and federal governments.

In fact, during September and October 2015, for the first time in 2015 Google’s self driving car were accident-free for two months in a row. This happened despite the record number of Google cars on public roads during that tenure. Google reported 48 vehicles out and about. That’s a full 20 cars more than had been tooling around on public thoroughfares prior to August 2015.

Total Cumulative Incidents per Month

Even as more cars are on the roads, Google appears to be throttling back a bit on miles. In November, Google Cars drove approximately 70,000 miles, collectively. That’s about 18% less than the 85,000 miles logged in September and October, the two months that were incident-free.

Because of the lower milage and the new accident, Google cars’ per-mile-driven accident rate jumped to 7.46 per 1,000,000 miles. This reversed two consecutive months of decline. To put this in perspective, Google’s AV current incident rate is about 2.5 times the national rate for “property-damage-only crashes”, as reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (which is 3 for 1,000,000 miles).

While that may seem high, it’s almost certain that the NHTSA statistics overlook millions of minor incidents that are never reported to authorities to avoid insurance and subsequent rate increases for the driver that caused the accident. Also, the types of car accidents described in Google’s report seem to indicate that self-driving technology wasn’t the cause of the crash. For example, in 14 of the 17 accidents, the Google Car was struck from behind.

This implies that a human error on the part of the driver of the other car was the likely cause of the accident. With the number of miles driven continuing to increase, it is looking more and more like Google Cars will actually make our roads safer by taking human drivers away from the wheel and preventing them from rear-ending other drivers.

About the Silk Google Cars Monitoring Project

As of November 30th 2015, Google has reported a total of 17 accidents involving its self-driving cars since the beginning of testing in 2010. Since September of 2014, the company has been legally required to publicly report on all the incidents involving its autonomous vehicles if it wants to continue the testing. We’re curating this Silk to track Google’s reports and visualize them in interactive maps and charts. Follow the project to get email notifications for every update.