The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2 
 
 Chris Urmson Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 16, 2015 
 
 Summer is one of the most dangerous times of the year on U.S. streets, as many of us spend more time behind the wheel, heading out for long road trips or local barbecues. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, for example, has declared the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day to be “The 100 Deadliest Days” for teenage drivers — and they’re not on the roads alone. Statistics like this keep my team and me working hard on a fully self-driving car that can get you from A to B safely, no matter how many beverages you have by the pool or how many texts you send to the new friend you met there. 
 
 Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road. That’s a big motivator for us. The most recent collision, during the evening rush hour on July 1, is a perfect example. One of our Lexus vehicles was driving autonomously towards an intersection in Mountain View, CA. The light was green, but traffic was backed up on the far side, so three cars, including ours, braked and came to a stop so as not to get stuck in the middle of the intersection. After we’d stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17 mph — and it hadn’t braked at all. 
 
 As you can see from the video above, our braking was normal and natural, and the vehicle behind us had plenty of stopping distance — but it never decelerated. This certainly seems like the driver was distracted and not watching the road ahead. Thankfully, everyone in both vehicles was okay, except for a bit of minor whiplash, and a few scrapes on our bumper. The other vehicle wasn’t so lucky; its entire front bumper fell off. 
 
 Although we don’t like getting hit, there’s a silver lining here. We all want to know how self-driving cars are measuring up against their human counterparts, but the statistics we need to do this simply aren’t ordinarily gathered. National crashes-per-miles-driven rates are currently calculated on police-reported crashes. Yet there are millions of fender benders every year that go unreported and uncounted — potentially as many as 55% of all crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (None of the accidents in which people hit us resulted in a police report — not even the July 1 crash, even though the police were on site.) Furthermore, the numbers that are available don’t distinguish between miles-driven before causing a crash vs simply being involved in one. This all means no one knows the real crashes-per-miles-driven rates for typical American streets. 
 
 But we’re now driving enough — and getting hit enough — that we can start to make some assumptions about that real crashes-per-miles-driven rate; it’s looking higher than we thought. (Our cars, with safety drivers aboard, are now self-driving about 10,000 miles per week, which is about what a typical American adult drives in a year.) It’s particularly telling that we’re getting hit more often now that the majority of our driving is on surface streets rather than freeways; this is exactly where you’d expect a lot of minor, usually-unreported collisions to happen. Other drivers have hit us 14 times since the start of our project in 2009 (including 11 rear-enders), and not once has the self-driving car been the cause of the collision. Instead, the clear theme is human error and inattention. We’ll take all this as a signal that we’re starting to compare favorably with human drivers. 
 
 Our self-driving cars can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable or distracted. People, on the other hand, “drive as if the world is a television show viewed on TiVo that can be paused in real time — one can duck out for a moment, grab a beer from the fridge, and come back to right where they left off without missing a beat” — to quote Sheila Klauer of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. That’s certainly consistent with what we’re seeing. Please, as you get behind the wheel this summer, keep your eyes on the road. The fight to end distracted driving starts with each of us — at least until that day when you can summon a self-driving car and just kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride. 
 
 You can find chapter 1 here. ||||| Chris Urmson, far right, shows off his project's self-driving pod to Google chairman Eric Schmidt and U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. (Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images) 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO - Picture the sad sack who has a sign saying "Kick me" taped to his back. Google's self-driving cars can relate, only the sign seems to say "Hit me." 
 
 Just weeks after reporting to the California Department of Motor Vehicles that its gadget-packed Lexus SUVs had been hit twice in the rear bumper while waiting at stop lights in Mountain View, Calif., Google reported Thursday that on July 1 a motorist smashed into its stationary autonomous vehicle at 17 mph, resulting in minor whiplash to passengers in both cars and causing the offending car's front bumper to fall off. 
 
 "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," Google self-driving car project director Chris Urmson tells USA TODAY. "None of our accidents rise to the level of police reports. So what we are experiencing is what the road is really like." 
 
 This marks the 14th time Google's fleet has been in an accident since the search company began trolling the streets of its headquarters in 2009. In every instance, other motorists have been at fault, Google says. These accidents may soon grow in number as Google recently began mapping the streets of Austin, Texas, and added its new pod-like two-person cars to Silicon Valley roads. 
 
 To date, Google's autonomous vehicles have logged nearly 2 million miles, and add around 10,000 new miles of data each week. All of its cars are accompanied by law by safety drivers. 
 
 The July 1 accident, which is the focus of Urmson's latest blog post and a video that shows a computer readout of the incident, would appear to be another example of humans making Google's point: That distracted driving in the age of smartphones and social media is a growing menace that might benefit from us turning much of that task over to robots. 
 
 Skeptics, who include leaders of auto companies focused more on driver-assist technology, argue that fully autonomous cars come with regulatory, insurance and hacking liabilities. 
 
 In his blog post, Urmson writes: "Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road. That's a big motivator for us." 
 
 Urmson goes on to say that according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration some 55% of minor accidents go unreported often despite police being on the scene. That was in fact the case for the July 1 crash, which was the result of Google's car stopping at an green-lit intersection - along with other motorists - because the traffic ahead was backed up. 
 
 Writes Urmson: "Our self-driving cars can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable or distracted. People, on the other hand, 'drive as if the world is a television show viewed on TiVo that can be paused in real time – one can duck out for a moment, grab a beer from the fridge, and come back to right where they left off without missing a beat,' to quote Sheila Klauer of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. That's certainly consistent with what we're seeing." 
 
 Also Thursday, Google beat Wall Street earnings expectations and saw its stock shoot up 3.5% in after hours trading to $579. 
 
 Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava on Twitter: @marcodellacava 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1J3kaRi ||||| LOS ANGELES (AP) — Google Inc. revealed Thursday that one of its self-driving car prototypes was involved in an injury accident for the first time. 
 
 FILE - In this May 13, 2015, file photo, Google's self-driving Lexus car drives along street during a demonstration at Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. Google says that one of its self-driving cars... (Associated Press) 
 
 In the collision, a Lexus SUV that the tech giant outfitted with sensors and cameras was rear-ended in Google's home city of Mountain View, where more than 20 prototypes have been self-maneuvering through traffic. 
 
 The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain. 
 
 In California, a person must be behind the wheel of a self-driving car being tested on public roads to take control in an emergency. Google typically sends another employee in the front passenger seat to record details of the ride on a laptop. In this case, there was also a back seat passenger. 
 
 Google has invested heavily as a pioneer of self-driving cars, technology it believes will be safer and more efficient than human drivers. 
 
 This was the 14th accident in six years and about 1.9 million miles of testing, according to the company. Google has said that its cars have not caused any of the collisions — though in 2011 an employee who took a car to run an errand rear-ended another vehicle while the Google car was out of self-driving mode. 
 
 In 11 of the 14, Google said its car was rear-ended. 
 
 In a blog posted Thursday, the head of Google's self-driving car program, Chris Urmson, wrote that his SUVs "are being hit surprisingly often" by distracted drivers, perhaps people looking at their phones. 
 
 "The clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson wrote. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers." 
 
 In a telephone interview, Urmson said his team was exploring whether its cars could do something to alert distracted drivers before a collision. Honking would be one possibility, but Urmson said he worried that could start to annoy residents of Mountain View. 
 
 According to an accident report that Google filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles about the July 1 crash: 
 
 Google's SUV was going about 15 mph in self-driving mode behind two other cars as the group approached an intersection with a green light. 
 
 The first car slowed to a stop so as not to block the intersection — traffic on the far side was not moving. The Google car and the other car in front of it also stopped. 
 
 Within about a second, a fourth vehicle rear-ended the Google car at about 17 mph. On-board sensors showed the other car did not brake. 
 
 The driver of that car reported "minor neck and back pain." The SUV's rear bumper was slightly damaged, while the vehicle that struck it lost its front bumper. 
 
 Mountain View police responded, but did not file an accident report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Contact Justin Pritchard at http://twitter.com/lalanewsman .
– It sounds as if Google is getting a bit fed up with the way distracted, flawed humans keep crashing into its self-driving cars. In the latest accident, which the AP reports is the first involving a Google car to cause human injury, a car rear-ended a stationary self-driving car at 17mph, causing minor whiplash to people in both vehicles. This is the 14th accident involving the self-driving cars, and Google says they have all been minor and all been the fault of the driver of the other vehicle. "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," self-driving car project chief Chris Urmson tells USA Today. In the accidents, which include 11 rear-enders, "the clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson writes in a Medium blog post. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers." Unlike humans, he notes, Google's cars "can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable, or distracted." He tells the AP that Google is looking into ways to alert distracted drivers when a collision with a self-driving car is imminent, although they suspect self-honking cars won't go down too well with the public.