The crash may be the first case of one of Google’s autonomous cars hitting another vehicle and making an error. Google said it updated its software after the crash. The crash took place in Mountain View on Feb 14 when a self-driving Lexus sought to get around some sandbags in a wide lane.
Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour. The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue," it said.
But three seconds later, as the Google car in autonomous mode re-entered the center of the lane, it struck the side of the bus, causing damage to the left front fender, front wheel and a driver side sensor. No one was injured.
Google said today in a statement that "we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that."
The company also said it has reviewed this incident "and thousands of variations on it in our simulator in detail and made refinements to our software. From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles, and we hope to handle situations like this more gracefully in the future."
There has been no official determination of fault in the crash. Google has previously said that its autonomous vehicles have never been at fault in any crashes. The Mountain View Police Department said that no police report was filed in the incident.