<story><title>Apple self-driving car in accident: California DMV filing</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos/apple-self-driving-car-in-accident-california-dmv-filing-idUSKCN1LG2X1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>userbinator</author><text>The important part is that it got rear-ended while waiting to merge --- I suspect a strong factor in this was the fact that the car behind it was expecting it to go and merge, but it suddenly stopped instead.&lt;p&gt;Even for a human, merging into flowing traffic is tricky and one of the more difficult maneuvers; combine that with a (not obviously?) self-driving car that doesn&amp;#x27;t behave quite like human drivers expect, and I can see how this could happen.&lt;p&gt;If I saw a clearly-marked &amp;quot;autonomous test vehicle&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d probably stay far away from it, but I suspect this one wasn&amp;#x27;t. Imagine the surprise of the human driver who thought the car in front that he hit was just driven by another idiot...</text></item><item><author>GhostVII</author><text>Doesn&amp;#x27;t seem particularly notable, they got rear ended at 15 miles an hour while essentially stopped.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>refurb</author><text>Looks like it happened here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;goo.gl&amp;#x2F;maps&amp;#x2F;RHiVTRSuDJ62&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;goo.gl&amp;#x2F;maps&amp;#x2F;RHiVTRSuDJ62&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pretty short merge lane, more of a surface street than a highway.  Probably not atypical for a car to stop to wait for an opening to merge.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple self-driving car in accident: California DMV filing</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos/apple-self-driving-car-in-accident-california-dmv-filing-idUSKCN1LG2X1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>userbinator</author><text>The important part is that it got rear-ended while waiting to merge --- I suspect a strong factor in this was the fact that the car behind it was expecting it to go and merge, but it suddenly stopped instead.&lt;p&gt;Even for a human, merging into flowing traffic is tricky and one of the more difficult maneuvers; combine that with a (not obviously?) self-driving car that doesn&amp;#x27;t behave quite like human drivers expect, and I can see how this could happen.&lt;p&gt;If I saw a clearly-marked &amp;quot;autonomous test vehicle&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d probably stay far away from it, but I suspect this one wasn&amp;#x27;t. Imagine the surprise of the human driver who thought the car in front that he hit was just driven by another idiot...</text></item><item><author>GhostVII</author><text>Doesn&amp;#x27;t seem particularly notable, they got rear ended at 15 miles an hour while essentially stopped.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mizza</author><text>I wonder if it would be more useful if these cars had more lights than normal cars (yellow, green, etc.), so that they could signal their intentions before they act.</text></comment>