Back in December, Google decided to spin-out its self-driving car project into a company called Waymo. What Google also did was end its publishing of monthly accident reports for those self-driving cars.
The website that used to house all of the monthly reports for the self-driving cars now redirects to the Waymo homepage. Google began publishing the monthly accident reports in June 2015 to help ease the concern over the number of accidents these cars were causing.
A statement from Waymo regarding the removal of the accident reports states: “We’ve replaced our PDF reports with a new blog and website that continues to give insights into our technology. In addition, our team puts together reports that are published on the CA DMV website detailing safety-related disengages in the state and collisions we’ve experienced on the road.”
A large portion of the reports noted fender bender accidents that reportedly occurred when the vehicles were in manual mode and hit by other drivers. One of the reports also documented the time where a self-driving car hit the side of a transit bus in California because it incorrectly estimated that the bus was going to slow down or yield. Another report indicated an incident where a self-driving car was pulled over by police for driving too slow.
The very last accident report issued by Google covered Nov. 2016, which was the first accident-free month since Jan. 2016.
Waymo is not legally required to post accident reports, but is required to report accidents to the California DMV. All accidents reported to the DMV are then published on the DMV website. The last accident published occurred in Oct. 2016.
Waymo has said that it will send accident reports to the DMV of every state where it is testing self-driving cars. It is then up to those individual agencies to decide whether or not to publish the information for the public.
An experienced motor vehicle accidents attorney in the Lehigh Valley can inform you of your rights and help you understand the next steps in your case.
Source: Business Insider, “Google quietly stopped publishing monthly accident reports for its self driving cars,” Steve Kovach, Jan. 18, 2017