The non-profit organization Consumer Watchdog is calling on Google to release the reports of accidents involving its driverless cars that have been filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and to commit to making public future driverless car accident reports public.
“It is important that the public know what happened,” wrote John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, in a letter to Google. “You are testing driverless vehicles on public highways, quite possibly putting other drivers at risk.”
Read Consumer Watchdog’s letter to Google CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/ltrpage050415.pdf.
“Unbelievably, Google is planning to offer its robot cars without a steering wheel, brake pedal or accelerator so there would be no way for a person to take control in an emergency,” said Simpson. “That plan underscores the need for the public to know the full details of all accidents.”
Consumer Watchdog learned that there had been accidents involving Google’s robot cars when the nonprofit nonpartisan public interest group filed a Public Records Act request with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) seeking communications between Google and the department. However, the DMV treats driverless car accident reports with confidentiality and would not release them.
DMV rules also require companies testing driverless cars to report the details of all incidents when the robot technology was disengaged and the test driver had to assume control. Consumer Watchdog wants Google to make the disengagement reports public as well.
