Google Blames Self-Driving Car Crash on Human Error

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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It wasn’t two hours after we posted the initial story on Friday about the car crash that Google was out and about doing damage control. When Steve posted and predicted the blame would be shifted, he was dead on target. The spin will probably be enough to save any embarrassment to Google’s project.
 
maybe it's the hangover but none of the comments on that news story that was linked to make sense.. something about eric schmidt trying to murder them?? Nonsensical comments aside, the article does make a good point that it's better for their project if an employee takes the fall rather than their software/hardware. It may or may not have been human error.. but as someone that really wants self-driving cars to succeed I hope this doesn't hinder development and experimenting with the project.
 
What the hell is with the comments on this page?

Something from PeterCao about how Google plotted to murder him. wtf.
 
The comments obviously haven't been censored or edited....welcome to the Internet :D
 
Technically, all computer controlled anything that does something wrong is human error. Computers only follow programmed instructions (so far). Even when "guessing", it is still following a pre-programmed algorithm.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Technically, all computer controlled anything that does something wrong is human error. Computers only follow programmed instructions (so far). Even when "guessing", it is still following a pre-programmed algorithm.
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Yes, but it is easier to "fire" the driver and quietly give him a nice bonus for taking the fall than to deal with the public backlash against their program. Could really have been human error, but I'd be interested to see the police report on what actually happened.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Technically, all computer controlled anything that does something wrong is human error. Computers only follow programmed instructions (so far). Even when "guessing", it is still following a pre-programmed algorithm.
Click to expand...

yup, there really are no bugs in computer programs. Just poorly writen code just doing what you tell it to do.
 
Exavior said:
yup, there really are no bugs in computer programs. Just poorly writen code just doing what you tell it to do.
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By definition, if a program has bugs, then its code is not properly written.
 
This project is also still in its beta stage...right? You cant be surprised in these early stages about screw ups like this.
 
It was prius on prius... Maybe the car became self aware and...was in the mood? :confused:

But actually it was on manual mode...which means the drivers at google are weird...:confused:
 
Angry said:
This project is also still in its beta stage...right? You cant be surprised in these early stages about screw ups like this.
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Indeed. Since no one got hurt, I'm actually glad it happened so Google could look into it and fix the issue to prevent future incidents that could be more dangerous.
 
Hornet said:
Indeed. Since no one got hurt, I'm actually glad it happened so Google could look into it and fix the issue to prevent future incidents that could be more dangerous.
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Unless, of course, it actually WAS human error - which is extremely plausible. In which case nobody learned anything.

Besides, even if it was in self driving mode, the driver is still there to prevent accidents. Either the driver was in manual mode and screwed up, or he was slacking on the job and screwed up.
 
So if there was an accident that REALLY WAS human error (heck maybe this one) you would still predict that Google would blame-shift to a human.

Without you knowing what happened, you really can't say Google shifted blame. and Patting somebody on the back for "Predicting" something that is still unproven is silly.

What other made up conspiracies ya got?




d
 
Seems like this is an engadget "non story but we will make it a story" story. Consdiering I have not heard of any other crash stories about this car and probably the mass amount of hours it has already logged, I'm going to say it is still much better than the average teenage driver. Give the software another 5-10 years of development and it will be better than the average adult. In 20 years...it will probably be better than pretty much any driver under any conditions.
 
I'm curious.. If the car had failed to come to a stop and went on to crash into the other Prius, and the human in charge failed to react accordingly to stop the car. Google can easily pass this off as human error and nobody will be the wiser.. Thoughts?
 
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