I have read many accounts of this and it sounds to me that if this had been any other vehicle it would have been a "he said/she said" argument. Merging in a situation like this is never easy, always contentious and particularly if the bus driver hadn't been aware of the sand bags this could have just been one of those quickly forgotten fender benders.

But, as someone who drives around and comes across these vehicles all the time, I tend to be more wary of them then any other vehicle and would give them a wide berth. In a situation where instead of one driver's word against the other, we actually have a record of all the sensor's logs. This is quite interesting. Obviously a bus driver, a professional driver, is in a situation where his driving record is part of his job, but arguing against a car with sensor record is not a good idea. We have to accept the evidence that the car was partly responsible and like any rookie driver, will learn from this collision. I am actually surprised that a bus driver didn't act like any of the rest of us who give these Google cars a wide berth, just in case.

Anyway, this is an interesting development. Thankfully nobody was hurt. Perhaps vehicles in future will also acquire some of the Google technology even if they are not self driving. These cars cannot but help to make cars of the future more safe.

Perhaps this accident should be looked on as a learning moment for all of the industry.

I have also read several accounts of this incident and each one seems to be different. Some of these stories have incorrect (heading of vehicles) or missing information.

In this article, one piece of missing information is the claim (elsewhere) that Google has since reprogrammed the software running these self-driving cars to note the tendency of larger vehicles not to yield. That is the standard modus operandii of VTA bus drivers: we don't care what is in the way.

This moment is not just a learning moment for all of the industry. Every single minute of any self-driving vehicle is a learning moment.

These driving computers are trying to learn what a lot of us take for granted. What do you do if a squirrel dashes across the road while you are driving 15 mph? 25 mph? 40 mph? What do you do if a ball rolls out into the street from between two parked vehicles?

I doubt that any self-driving/autonomous vehicle will have a perfect operational record. However I do believe that the technology and knowledge for machines to safely outperform human beings in ordinary daily driving is attainable within my lifetime.

How and when this technology is to be deployed for the general public is an unknown but for sure, that day will come some day.

I'm baffled that some of the comments on other news websites appear to indicate that some have decided that the current implementation is the final product. That is far from the case.

Politicians have allowed Google to use the public streets to experiment with its silly cars. And politicians have continued to push old technology (buses) down our throats. How appropriate that the two have collided.

This is the classic accident caused by passing on the right and then swerving to left before turning. I see it all the time. Was the bus at fault? No way. It's the fault of the dangerous robot car.

considering how many millions of miles/hours driven, and this is only the 1st accident? A super low speed bump?
Sorry doubters, this is showing how much safer these cars are than human drivers. How many human drivers drove into cars and pedestrians during that same time frame? More than 1, that's a damn fact.

If we applied the same standard to human drivers as some people are applying to the self driving cars, no human would be allowed to drive. The self driving car's accident rate per unit distance driven is less than the statistically average driver.

Google's robotic cars are a SAFETY HAZARD, period. There are already too many people on the road who don't know how to drive, and THEN we add to the public roads a driverless Google car that our elected officials have decided to allow to wander around town while working out the kinks in the computer program? I live in Mt. View and these things irritate the crap out of me. The Google cars drive like there's an extremely elderly and partially blind driver behind the wheel. If one of those Google vehicles causes a wreck with me, the cops will arrive on the scene to find me beating the hell out of that Google Lexus with whatever I can find in my car to use as an implement of destruction.

The Google car was already occupying the lane and the bus-driver tried to slip by in the same lane. Lane-splitting with a bus never ends well.

If I had to choose between being on a road with self-driving cars or being on a road with my fellow citizens on their cell phone talking and texting, I'd take the robot anyday! I commute from Mtn View to Hayward everyday and there's no end to the "creative" driving that I regularly see.

I do not think the Google cars are a hazard. I live in Mountain View and see and drive with them quite a bit. I don't find them to be any more of a hazard than drivers.

As a matter of fact, when compared to a person learning to drive or within their 1st year of driving, I would much prefer to drive along with the Google cars.

@Mark, the accident rates do not back up your statement, in fact they prove it wrong. The facts clearly show that they are indeed safe, safer than human cars given all data available, and this is just the prototype! You cannot change the facts, even if you use caps and say "Period" after your statement.

I want everyone to realize that Mark above drives a car on our local roads, ready to act out with violent destruction due to his personal irritation, hell he's already imagined it. It is that very same personality that fuels the crazy-agro driver who is a hazard to us all on the road.

Hurry up Google.

It sounds like the Google car was trying to be sneaky and was driving essentially along the shoulder, no longer in any legitimate lane. it "moved to the right-hand side of the lane to maneuver by other cars in the same lane that were stopped...". If you are passing on the right side of cars in your lane, then where are you exactly? You're not in your lane anymore. You are in a no man's land and you took the risk of leaving the safety of your lane to creep past everyone in the narrow shoulder to the right (I hope the Google car checked for bicycles first).
When you leave your lane to creep along the shoulder and get blocked by an unforeseen obstacle, no one in your original lane is obligated to let you back in. You screwed yourself by trying to sneak past and have to accept the consequences and wait however long it takes to safely re-enter the lane.
The first mistake was trying to sneak by on the right without being sure the path was wide enough. A human would have seen the sandbags ahead and not tried the maneuver in the first place. We've all done it -- you mentally assess if you can get past everyone without scraping the side of someone's car. The sand bags were either not seen or not considered first.

I just saw one of those Google Luxury Coach buses from Wedriveu pull out from a city bus stop at the same intersection. It was very aggressive. It drove along in the parking spaces until it could force its way into traffic again. At least the Google car was in a portion of the lane not reserved for parking.

It would have been SO much more amusing if the accident had been between a Google Car and a Google Bus.

Thank goodness it was a weekend, since that is one block from Graham Middle School and that intersection is often filled with kids...

Those kids are used to dodging the erratic human drivers, the ones who have hit and continue to hit those kids. Remember all the issues? Now a solution is on the horizon for ACTUAL safety, not just imagined. The Google cars are safer, esp around bikes and pedestrians.

Given how concerned you are for the kid's safety around the school, would you propose a ban on human powered cars along that road? They have factually proven themselves a danger to our kids....much much more of a danger than self driving cars.

Here's a better description of what happened. The google car was stuck in the right lane, saw a gap in front of a bus that it could merge into, assuming the bus would yield, as is customary when someone ahead of you pulls into the road, but the bus didn't flinch. This sounds like an accident that's both drivers' fault. Google apparently will tweak the car to assume that buses will never yield.

Here's a link to a story about it
Web Link

Mountain View and neighboring towns have MANY roads with double-wide right lanes where the custom is to split the lane into a right turn lane and a straight lane near the intersection. I see human drivers do this every day. It's totally ordinary, not aggressive or unusual. When there's a bike lane on the right, the safe and legal thing for a car driver to do is to merge into the bike lane before turning right, to avoid side-swiping any biker that might come up behind. So I completely understand why the self-driving car was designed to try the same maneuver. It just got unlucky because of the sandbags blocking the right part of the right lane.

I'm sorry I totally side with MARK .. He's intelligent & cool headed. i can't wait to read about him in the Voice .. Road rage Mark goes to jail ..

That can't be an actual human response. I think Mark's post is a false flag to get people to think that the roads are full of lunatics like him who shouldn't be behind the wheel of a trike let alone a car or SUV (Noted, there are many but not all)
The post was designed to make people think "Jeeze, a nice calm unemotional self driving car sounds good compared to this."

Has Google ever said why the software would keep driving into a moving bus? even at 2-3 mph? It seems important to understand what made the software do that or we don't have any idea what it might do in other situations. This is software with sensors and it ignored its sensors. I hope other companies self driving cars' software is better understood and debugged by their designers and programmers.

@worried - the article says that both the car and the Google employee at the wheel saw the bus, but both assumed the bus would yield to the car pulling into the lane. Experienced drivers know that buses don't yield to cars for a number of reasons (for example, bus passengers are unbelted or standing up, and abrupt stops can cause falls and injuries), but evidently neither the software designers and engineers nor the drivers of Google's autonomous cars are aware of this basic tenet of city driving.

Obviously this is a learning experience for both Google and also VTA.

If this had been another vehicle rather than a bus, the driver would have allowed the Google car to merge. Most of us give these cars a little more leeway than other vehicles. It seems that VTA bus drivers don't.

Now perhaps VTA will send a memo to their drivers about courteous behavior to other vehicles, and in particular Google vehicles. I don't know specifically about VTA, but many bus companies fine drivers who are not able to keep to their schedules and this is one thing that may have made the bus refuse to allow the car to merge.

I know that I am a courteous driver and do allow people to merge or to enter in front of me from driveways or side streets when speeds are in the 15 mph range. As drivers, we know we should be courteous to others, but there are always the arrogant so and sos who refuse to be courteous and yet still demand courtesy when they are the ones needing to be let in at a merge.

All the algorithims in the world can't be written to ascertain whether a driver is an arrogant so and so, or a courteous one. That is something we get gut feelings and intuition about, very hard to write than into a computer program. I suppose now the Google cars will have instruction not to expect buses to be courteous. Something we have all learned from experience too.