A handful of the self-driving cars currently on the road in California have run into trouble—albeit allegedly not caused by the cars themselves. An investigation by The Associated Press has discovered that four of the 48 autonomous vehicles licensed for operation on public roads there have already gotten into some kind of accident.
All four of the scrapes reportedly happened at less than 10 mph. In two of them the car was in autonomous mode, while the human required by law to be behind the wheel was in control during the other two.
There aren’t many additional details available at this time. AP got the information in part because accidents since September have to be reported to the California DMV, but that agency wouldn’t give out any more information. From the AP report:
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Three involved Lexus SUVs that Google Inc. outfitted with sensors and computing power in its aggressive effort to develop “autonomous driving,” a goal the tech giant shares with traditional automakers. The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had the other accident with one of its two test vehicles. Google and Delphi said their cars were not at fault in any accidents, which the companies said were minor.
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Delphi says its car—an Audi SQ5, perhaps the one it recently used to drive autonomously from San Francisco to New York City—was hit while waiting to make a left turn by another, non-autonomous vehicle. Google wouldn’t say what happened with its three accidents, but has said before that its fleet of street-legal autonomous cars have gotten into some minor scrapes and fender benders before. None of the other automakers licensed for autonomous testing in California, which include Audi and Mercedes, have reported accidents.
While questions about who’s at fault when a self-driving car gets itself into an accident could be answered sooner rather than later, we’re most concerned with Google’s secrecy concerning incidents involving its vehicles. After all, it’s going to take a lot of convincing for many people to give up control behind the wheel, and honesty about what’s going right or wrong with such projects seems like a logical step to take to that end.
A version of this story originally appeared on popularmechanics.com via AP.
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