Google’s new fleet of self-driving cars is being tested in the Valley and the autonomous vehicle are finding Arizona drivers somewhat hard to navigate.
In its monthly self-driving car project report, Google said three of its vehicles were involve in crashes during testing in the city of Chandler in August.
Of the three accidents, only one of them happened with the company’s Lexus SUV models in autonomous mode. It was a rear ended by a driver behind it as it tried to merge with traffic.
The other two vehicles were operating in manual mode. The report states one was also rear ended and the other collision was caused by another driver that ran a red light.
At a business conference in Phoenix last week, the head of business operations for Google’s Self-Driving Car division, Jennifer Haroon, said the goal is making the streets safer, not more dangerous.
"If you look at all road crashes, not just those that end in fatalities, 94 percent of them are human error," Haroon sid. "So that’s really where we took a look and said we think there are some technological answers that really address that portion of driving.”
Google began mapping Chandler earlier this yearand introduced its fleet of 24 vehicles in the city this summer to test them in conditions during the Valley’s excessively hot, dusty and monsoon-prone conditions.
