Safety is one the primary focuses and selling points of self-driving cars, which is why companies like Google have been working so hard to make them safer than human drivers could ever be, but there’s a point where cars become TOO safe. Google has been running into this problem a lot, where its self-driving cars are more cautious than they need to be and end up making inconvenient mistakes, such as assuming that every other driver on the road is a moron and hitting the breaks whenever the most minuscule sign of danger appears. Human drivers, on the other hand, are more smooth when they drive because they understand that most of these “threats” aren’t threats at all, which is why Google is working on making its self-driving cars more human-like.
Google Inc. designed its self-driving cars to follow the rules of the road. Now it’s teaching them to drive like people, by cutting corners, edging into intersections and crossing double-yellow lines. Humans expect drivers to avoid collisions. But Google’s robots assume the worst and tap the brakes frequently as their digital “eyes” spot potential dangers, sometimes prompting other drivers to stop abruptly. The cars are “a little more cautious than they need to be,” Chris Urmson, who leads Google’s effort to develop driverless cars, told a conference in July. “We are trying to make them drive more humanistically.” Google is moving closer to commercializing self-driving cars, with the hiring earlier this month of auto-industry veteran John Krafcik as chief executive of its car project. One big remaining challenge is to make the cars, which have run more than a million miles on public roads, move more seamlessly among human drivers. Since 2009, the cars have been involved in 16 minor accidents. In 12 of those mishaps, the vehicles were rear-ended. That’s a higher accident rate than the national average, but Google says national statistics exclude many minor accidents similar to those its cars have experienced.