Spine Injury, Totalled Car: Google's Self-Driving Project 'Waymo' Had A Dozen Accidents No One Knew Of

Google and Uber had a lengthy legal battle that ended in February this year. To be more specific, the lawsuit involved Google¡¯s self-driving project-turned-company ¡®Waymo¡¯, which had blamed Uber at the time for stealing its driverless car technology. All this, for one employee who worked with both the firms successively, named Anthony Levandowski.

Months on, a new report has emerged that suggests there is more to the high-profile drama ensuing the once-hailed genius engineer. As per The New York Times report, thanks to Levandowski, Google¡¯s project was responsible for a dozen accidents in its early years, including three serious ones.

One totalled test car, a spinal injury requiring multiple surgeries and several not-so-serious accidents took place during the Google project¡¯s initiation, which had not come to light until recently, as the company did not report these to the authorities. It was only after 2014, that California regulations started asking companies to report any instance in which a self-driving vehicle is ¡°in any manner involved in a collision originating from the operation of the autonomous vehicle on a public road that resulted in the damage of property or in bodily injury or death.¡± The mentioned accidents took place prior to that, at the time when the research was titled ¡®Project Chauffeur¡¯.

Reuters

The ¡®spine-injury¡¯ accident dates back to 2011, when Levandowski modified the test cars¡¯ software in order to take them on otherwise forbidden routes. Post an argument on this between Levandowski and another Google executive named Isaac Taylor, the men headed off in a self-driving Prius and ultimately landed up in an accident. It was Taylor on the receiving end though.

Maybe that is why Levandowski, to date, seems to be cool with such experimentation. "If it is your job to advance technology, safety cannot be your No. 1 concern," he told The New Yorker. "If it is, you'll never do anything. It's always safer to leave the car in the driveway. You'll never learn from a real mistake."

A spokesperson at Waymo has a completely different take on this though. "The Google self-driving project was founded with a mission to improve road safety and that's the standard we hold ourselves to," he said in a written statement to CNBC.

"Safety is our highest priority as we test and develop this technology."