The future is getting closer all the time. From camera sunglasses to a smart home that can tell how you’re feeling, there are plenty of innovations that make us excited about the world going forward. But perhaps we shouldn’t rush things. We aren’t quiiiiiiiite at the future yet.
One of Google’s autonomous cars was involved in a t-bone collision on Friday. The incident has been called the worst autonomous vehicle accident yet, although nobody was injured in the crash.
According to a statement from Google, the car was driving itself through San Francisco (with somebody in the driver’s seat) when another car ran a red light and rammed into the passenger side of Google’s car. The airbags deployed and both passenger side doors caved in.
Once the Google car detected the oncoming vehicle, it immediately put on the brakes. So did the human sitting behind the driver’s wheel. However it wasn’t enough to prevent the collision. The autonomous car couldn’t drive away from the collision and had to be towed away.
The Google cars have been in crashes before, but they’re mostly minor incidents that don’t cause much damage, like rear-ending. Friday’s crash proves that, although we can be super excited about the future (and Google promises that it’s working on making the cars safer and able to react to human error on the road), we’ve still got a bit more time to wait before cars will be driving us around.
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(h/t The Guardian; photo via Mark Wilson/Getty)