Data shows self-driving Google cars safer than its human-operated counterpart

Photo by Flickr User Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Google’s autonomous-car project collected data from self-driving Prius and Lexus cars over hundreds of thousands of miles on public roads, which they say reveals the self-driving vehicles are safer and smoother than human-driven cars.
Chris Urmson, who led the project, presented those results at a robotics conference in Santa Clara, Calif.
The analyses show Google’s cars accelerated and braked more sharply with a human behind the wheel than when they drove themselves. The automatic cars was also better at maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles.

“We’re spending less time in near-collision states,” Urmson said to Mashable. “Our car is driving more smoothly and more safely than our trained professional drivers.”

These cars may be hitting the roads, but they aren’t hitting the market anytime soon.

“We’re thinking about different ways of bringing it to market,” Urmson said. “I can’t tell you any more right now.”

H/T Cindy Huang