Google’s self-driving car tech might have just been dealt a serious blow: one of their self-driving test cars collided with a public school bus in Silicon Valley on Feb. 14 according to a report from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
According to International Business Times, Google has owned up to the incident but will not accept full responsibility, claiming the accidnet would not have occurred if not for the erratic and unpredictable behavior of the bus driver.
“We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that,” Google said in a statement.
Thankfully, not injuries were reported as a result of the crash. According to the DMV report, Google’s self-driving care was to blame for the crash.
The report claims that the self-driving car was trying to move around some sandbags in the street when it sideswiped the school bus. State law requires the driver who is monitoring the test vehicle to grab the wheel and take control when needed. However, Google’s test driver claims they thought the bus would give move to give the car room.
Google’s car was driving at 2 miles an hour and the bus was traveling at 15.
“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,” said Carl Urmson, head of Google’s self-driving car project.
The transit agency is investigating the accident and has yet to conclude who is really liable in this case.
Google’s self-driving cars have been involved in around a dozen accidents since 2014.