Google’s monthly self-driving car reports are fun to read through, and gives transparent accounts of what the team is up to, how the cars are performing, and any lessons learned along the way. Last month focused on pedestrians with Halloween being a helper.
This month? The company says its currently averaging 10,000-15,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets with 23 Lexus RX450h SUVs and 30 prototypes on the road. We also learned more about that car that was going too slow and got pulled over, as well as one of the cars being rear-ended at a red light.
On the former, Google explains why their cars were going so damn slow:
The Mountain View police now knows why Google’s cars are driving around at that speed…and so do we.
On the rear-end accident, ​one of Google’s Lexus model autonomous vehicles or “Google AV” was hit from behind by a car going 4 MPH while the Google AV waited to take a right at a red light. The car that hit it rolled after its stop, thus hitting the car. Nobody was hurt. The team went on to explain how it trains its software to handle situations such as knowing when it’s OK to turn right on red:
It’s all fascinating stuff. It’s like teaching a kid how to drive for the first time, except this kid is a big damn car driving itself around. Google feeds its software with all types of data, collecting more and more information as the cars drive the streets.
You can read the full report here.
