Robot cars say "Don't blame us for the accidents!"

Translating from commentary in German, the representative of the Google robotic car fleet of 20 vehicles said that although they had accumulated a total of 11 accidents in 1,600,000 kilometers of totally robotic operation, they were all fender- benders and no one was injured. Furthermore, he claimed that in NONE of the 11 cases was the robotic car at fault!
(7 times someone simply ran into the Google car, 3 times I think he said the car was side-swiped, and not sure about the other.)

From this information I, for one, have stopped worrying about the advent of self-driving cars because if the above claims are accurate, they are a LOT better than the typical human!!
(Of course, those might be just teen-aged robots making excuses for their accidents, but otherwise these data are quite reassuring.)

 

Germans strongly believe in fault, especially if it is yours rather than theirs, so that comment was made seriously as far as I could tell.
He also said the robot cars are programmed to pause before starting off when a stoplight shifts to green, and that had reportedly avoided some accidents from red-light-runners on the cross streets. But can you imagine the honking that will cause in typical city traffic in the USA?

 

Google sues itself?
At least Google has enough money to pay itself damages!
You could also take away the robot's driving privilege for a week or two. Tough love and all that works for teenagers, so maybe it will work for these robots.
"#5 is alive!"
Seriously, I've met bus drivers with over a million miles accident free, but they are rare and probably should be studied for good driving habits.
My hat's off to the Google robot car programmers, though.

 

Maybe that is why they built in the green light acceleration delay period .
I wonder what other rules are in that control system?