Google’s driverless cars make progress
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The number of human interventions in journeys made by driverless cars from Google company Waymo in California more than halved in 2016.
There were only one hundred twenty four “disengagement” incidents last year, where a driver had to take control of a test vehicle on public roads, down from three hundred forty one in 2015.
The cars drove almost 636,000 miles last year, compared with just over 424,000 in 2015.
Other states in the US do not require such reporting.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles published the annual reports on Wednesday.
Under law, every company that has a state permit to test autonomous vehicles in California must report how many times a driver had to intervene.
‘Reckless behaviour’
“Disengagements are a natural part of the testing process that permit our engineers to expand the software’ s capabilities and identify areas of improvement,” Waymo said in its report.
The most common reasons for interventions in Waymo cars were “software discrepancies, unwanted manoeuvres of the vehicle and perception discrepancies”, according to the company.
Of the one hundred twenty four incidents, only ten were caused by the “reckless” behaviour of another road user.
Beyond Waymo’s epic results, the news was generally good.
Cruise, the start-up leading General Motors’ autonomous driving development, upped its testing in San Francisco markedly. It went from driving fewer than five miles in June 2015, to almost four hundred in June 2016.
It reported four hundred fourteen disengagements in almost Ten,000 miles of driving in two thousand sixteen overall.
For some companies the records showcase a very puny amount of mileage covered by the autonomous cars.
In other US states with self-driving regulations – including Nevada, Michigan, and Florida – there is no requirement for public disclosure of this type of data, which is why, for example, not much is known about Uber’s autonomous vehicle testing.
Ford only reported five hundred ninety miles driven in 2016, all in the month of March. It only has two autonomous cars in California, but has a much larger fleet in Michigan, where reporting is not required.
Meantime BMW recorded one disengagement in its six hundred thirty eight miles of autonomous driving in March and April 2016, because lane markings on Highway one hundred one were not clear enough. The operator’s reaction time was recorded as “under two seconds”.
The companies that reported to the California DMV were: BMW, Bosch, GM Cruise, Delphi Automotive Systems, Ford, Waymo, Honda, Nissan North America, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla and Volkswagen.
In the UK, Volvo is expected to begin testing its autonomous cars on the roads this year.