Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Google Blames a Human for Its Robot Car Accident

Yes, one of Google’s self-driving cars got into an accident this week. But Google says you can’t blame this one on its technology. It says its Prius was under the control of an old-fashioned flesh-and-blood driver when it got too close to someone else’s Prius.

Statement from a Google spokesperson: “Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.”

The same Google spokesperson also wants us to know that Google’s self-driving cars have logged “160,000 miles autonomously without incident.”

Here’s the photo of what doesn’t appear to be a very serious incident, via Jalopnik:

Glad no one appears hurt, but this is a good reminder of one of the main reasons Google’s experiment with robot cars both fascinates us and creeps us out. As Marc Andreessen says, there are lots and lots and lots of people who shouldn’t be driving cars. But handing complete control of a car over to a computer can still strike you as an awfully big leap.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus