The Waymo autonomous car sends the cyclist to the hospital for lack of driver

A human error is to blame in the case of a Waymo self-driving car that swept a motorcycle in California, according to the company, in an accident that led the runner to the hospital last month.

According to the official report of the accident, the incident occurred on October 19 near the company's headquarters, in Mountain View, when a car began to melt. in the same lane as a Waymo vehicle operating autonomously at 21 miles at the time. The driver took control of the car and began to merge on the right when it collided with a Honda Rebel motorcycle that was just getting past the Waymo car.

According to the report, there were no unusual weather conditions in the clear morning, and Waymo's CEO, John Krafcik, was quick to blame the crash for human error.

Read more: Waymo is the first company allowed to test unmanned stand-alone cars in California

"Our review of this incident confirmed that our technology could have avoided the collision by taking safer action," he said in an article published Monday on the blog. "Our simulation shows that the automatic steering system would have reacted to the passenger car by reducing the speed of our vehicle and pushing it slightly outward in our lane, thus avoiding a collision."

The incident occurred about 10 days before Waymo, an affiliate of Google-parent Alphabet, obtained permission from state control authorities on October 30 to try and test driverless cars. relief on the roads of California. National legislation requires licensees to report all accidents involving self-driving cars to the 10-day motor vehicle department, as well as an annual "disengagement" report or incidents such as this accident where a human driver interferes autonomous driving, The Verge. reported.

Uber, one of Waymo's many stand-alone competitors, is also trying to return to stand-alone testing after one of his cars killed a pedestrian in Arizona during the summer. This incident, the first death attributable to autonomous cars, caused a shock wave in the area as it rushed to launch commercial autonomous driving services.

Waymo plans to launch a helpline with its autonomous vehicles in Arizona this year, and General Motors is also about to roll out a similar service next year, Reuters announced.

"Incidents like this are what motivates everyone in Waymo to work diligently and safely to bring our technology to the roads," said Waymo's Krafcik, "because that's the kind of situation that the autonomous vehicles can avoid. "