http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-google-self-driving-car-accident-20150716-story.html
In this article, an accident between a car with a person behind the wheel and a car with no person directing the car (but with three people inside) was described. The accident was evidently fault of the human in the normal car for rear-ending the self-driving car, as were 11 of the 14 accidents reported of these self-driving cars. There have only been 14 accidents reported in six years. However, this was the first accident in which the passengers suffered some injury, including whiplash. This definitely relates to our discussion in class about self-driving cars. It is clear through the statistics that self-driving cars are the safer options for humans on the road. Having grown up in the Silicon Valley area, I actually don’t find the concept all that strange – it is quite normal to see the Google cars out and about with their spinning cameras and nearly dormant passengers. Ultimately, if these machines can provide humanity with safe and responsible transport from one place to another – which they have proven to do throughout the years of testing – they should replace the norm of having a human behind the wheel. In unavoidable accident circumstances, I believe that a software program may be liable to make better decisions than humans because the element of panic, surprise, and fear are all absent. Such elements make humans prone to mistakes in high risk situations.