"I was there for the discussion with Reuters about automated vehicles," she told Ars by e-mail. "The story was taken completely out of context when describing a type of complex driving scenario that can occur in the real world. Our expert provided an example of a lane change scenario that our car recently experienced which, coincidentally, was with one of the Google cars also on the road at that time. It wasn’t a 'near miss' as described in the Reuters story."

1. http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/06/no-2-self-driving-cars-d...

"Our car did exactly what it was supposed to," she wrote. "Our car saw the Google car move into the same lane as our car was planning to move into, but upon detecting that the lane was no longer open it decided to terminate the move and wait until it was clear again."

Zero-point-six-eight seconds, sir. For an android, that is nearly an eternity. --Data

Back to the story, the article doesn't mention if the human drivers had to interfere to avoid collision. It would be quite pointless to have a self-driving car which you cannot trust and be always on the lookout to take over if it does something stupid.

It would seem to me (given the low density of self-driving cars and their excellent track record) that the odds of Delphi wanting get in the news and bash a competitor at the same time is greater than the odds of two self-driving cars happening to cross paths and causing a "near-miss".

Also seeing the "near miss" in the editorialized title - this Carlin quote is mandatory

“Here's a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if 2 planes almost collide, it's a near miss. Bullshit, my friend. It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss. [WHAM! CRUNCH!] "Look, they nearly missed!" "Yes, but not quite.”

Have you ever heard the phrase 'it's funny because it's true'? Well this isn't true, so I don't see Carlin as funny. He's just ignorant and angry.

They realised a collision was imminent and took evasive action? Sounds like they got it right to me.

Even assuming their evasive action was perfect, if instead of 2 s.d. cars was 1 normal car on the other side or some other obstacle (a building etc), getting on a collision course wouldn't be that safe...

EDIT: downvote? If someone disagress can also state why. Or am I shuttering the perfect technology dream?

John Absmeier, who was travelling in his company’s car at the time, said the Audi was forced to abort its lane change in the incident, which happened earlier this week.

I'm glad it was a robot, and not me driving that car. Not sure if I would have been able to change lanes that fast without causing an accident.

That's the issue: one of the robots forced another car to react quickly to avoid an accident. Had this been a human, it could have ended very differently.

From Ars Technica [0]

It wasn’t a 'near miss' as described in the Reuters story."

Instead, she explained how this was a normal scenario, and the Delphi car performed admirably.

"Our car did exactly what it was supposed to," she wrote. "Our car saw the Google car move into the same lane as our car was planning to move into, but upon detecting that the lane was no longer open it decided to terminate the move and wait until it was clear again."

[0] http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/06/no-2-self-driving-cars-d...

Err..

Source Article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/26/us-autos-selfdrivi...

"No collision took place" - refers to the two cars in this case.

"In all cases, the self-driving prototype was not at fault, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the companies." - refers to previous crashes excluding the one being discussed in the article.

Of course, we don't know if the Google car was in self-driving mode or was being operated by a person. The article only tells one side of the story.

Should be far easier that just driving down a crowded road. Effectively each car has the equivalent of a mac address and simply broadcasts its actions and any car listening within range responds appropriately.

noun

noun: near miss; plural noun: near misses

    1. a narrowly avoided collision or other accident.
    "she had a near miss when her horse was nearly sucked into a dyke"

    2.   a bomb or shot that just misses its target.
    "he had escaped more than twenty near misses"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM

It doesn't mean "nearly missed, but actually hit" -- check any dictionary.

On a more important note: do we really want all the different tech companies and car manufacturers competing to build separate driverless software and standards? Looking at how well that worked out for online maps, doesn't make me feel safer.

Iow this was all Google.

You can't seriously expect this to be "just a google thing".

Wouldn't all the cars by any manufacturer have to pass the same very rigorous driving tests in the first place, to be able to be sold in the market?

Even if Google's software was the absolute bees knees, what if Google deprioritized it? Left the industry? Made unreasonable licensing demands, or made exclusivity deals with competitor automotive manufactures? What if they used it as leverage to push manufactures around?

Even if you do decide to work with Google for now, not having a backup plan is just poor strategic planning. Having a backup plan means developing these sort of systems yourself.

If the goal is safety then a wild west with every company setting standards for their own projects isn't going to be the best approach. If the goal is profit then Yee-Haa let the gold rush begin!

Making each car responsible for its own collision avoidance is a lot more robust. If the sensors fail in one car, the others can take corrective action. For maximum safety, you'd also want the cars to be running different (but equally good) software, so you don't run into the type of situation where (e.g.) they all go nuts because the programmer didn't account for leap years or whatever.

Diversity is good. If everyone used the same software, it would all have the same flaws. Competition also provides an incentive to make the software better.