Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google said on Monday it bears "some responsibility" after one of its self-driving cars struck a municipal bus in a minor crash earlier this month.
The incident happened last Valentine's Day when a self-driving Lexus RX450h sought to get around some sandbags in a wide lane when it hit the side of a bus carrying 15 passengers in El Camino, the company's hometown of Mountain View, Calif.
This is perhaps the first incident that the smart cars caused an accident while in autonomous mode though Google's autonomous cars have been in other accidents before, but all were the fault of human drivers.
Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour.
The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue," it said.
But three seconds later, as the Google car in autonomous mode re-entered the center of the lane, it struck the side of the bus, causing damage to the left front fender, front wheel, and the driver side sensor. No one was injured in the car or on the bus.
"We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved, there wouldn't have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that."
Google said it has made "refinements" to their software following the incident. "From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles, and we hope to handle situations like this more gracefully in the future.
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