theregister.co.uk/2015/07/17 … end_prang/
A blog post by Chris Urmson, Google’s robot taxi guru, complains: “Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road.”
He cites “the most recent collision, during the evening rush hour” on 1 July as “a perfect example.”
One of the Chocolate Factory’s fleet of robot-chauffeured pods was painlessly rolling, as it autonomously might, towards an intersection near Google’s HQ in Mountain View, California.
The light was green, but traffic was backed up on the far side, so three cars, including ours, braked and came to a stop so as not to get stuck in the middle of the intersection.
After we’d stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17mph — it hadn’t braked at all.