California DMV Will Now Include Reports of All Autonomous Vehicle Accidents On Its Website

Jennifer van der Kleut

It has been said over and over again that autonomous vehicles will reduce the number of traffic accidents each year by as much as 80 to 90 percent, depending on who you ask.

Therefore, it is not surprising that when one of the foremost companies working on driverless car production, Google, has more than 10 accidents involving their driverless test cars in the past year, people are going to want to know what happened.

Earlier this year, when Google’s koala cars got into a few fender-benders - including the first to involve minor injuries to the passengers - the news media flew into an uproar. Reporters and news outlets demanded that California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) should disclose details of the accidents, if for no other reason than the public has a right to know if Google’s test cars are going to share the road with human-driven cars in the Bay Area.

The DMV appears to have heard the call, loud and clear. The department recently created a dedicated page on its website linking to reports of accidents involving autonomous cars.

Nine reports are up on the site this week, spanning October 2014 to August 2015. Of those, eight are linked to a Google car and one is linked to Delphi Automotive. All personal information such as insurance companies and names of passengers are redacted, but details of the accidents and company names are visible.

The report of the Delphi accident, which occurred in October last year, involved one of its Audi test vehicles traveling in the Mountain View/Los Altos area of California’s Bay Area.

The report indicates the test car was waiting for traffic to clear so that it could merge onto a multi-lane road when a Honda attempted a dangerous turn and accidentally came up over the center median, crashing into the Audi test car.

The reports indicate the Audi’s right front bumper was damaged. The driver of the Honda was found to be at fault and given a citation “for making an unsafe turning movement.”

ACCIDENT WITH INJURY

In the only reported autonomous car accident thus far to involve any injuries, a Google Lexus AV was involved in a minor accident with a Tesla Model S on Aug. 20 when it slowed to yield to a pedestrian, the DMV’s report indicates.

The Google test car was traveling down Shoreline Boulevard in Mountain View when it slowed. Meanwhile, the Tesla was changing lanes into the one the Google car was in, and the Tesla rear-ended the Google car at approximately 10 miles per hour, according to the report.

One of the Google employees in the car felt back pain and was taken to the hospital, where he was evaluated and released. The Google car sustained minor damage to its rear bumper. The Tesla car sustained more serious damage and was towed from the scene.

As these reports indicate, one problem that occurs when autonomous cars share the same roads with human-driven cars is that the autonomous car operates almost too safely. Human drivers - even at 10 miles per hour - can be more aggressive and do not anticipate the autonomous car to be so “by-the-book.” Further, it’s probably a safe bet that few human drivers know that current Google test cars have a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour, regardless of whether they’re traveling on a road with a higher speed limit.

Visit the California DMV’s page for autonomous vehicle accident reports.