New Delhi :
Google which has so far been boasting about his self driving car faced major embarrassment on Tuesday after it struck a public bus on a Silicon Valley street causing a minor accident.
This happens to be the first time when one of the tech company’s vehicles caused a crash during testing.
The incident occurred on February 14 when one of the Lexus SUVs it has outfitted with sensors and cameras hit the side of the bus near the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
According to a news agency, "the car intended to turn right off a major boulevard when it detected sandbags around a storm drain at the intersection. The right lane was wide enough to let some cars turn and others go straight, but the Lexus needed to slide to its left within the right lane to get around the obstruction. The Lexus was going 2 mph (3 kph) when it made the move and its left front struck the right side of the bus, which was going straight at 15 mph (24 kph)."
While no one was injured Google accepted some responsibility for the collision and wrote a report which was later submitted to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
The company statement read, “We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved there wouldn’t have been a collision. We saw the bus, we tracked the bus, we thought the bus was going to slow down, we started to pull out, there was some momentum involved.”
However, this is the first time a Google car in autonomous mode caused a crash once again raising the safety standards and questions regarding the automated technology.
