Google’s self-driving cars are getting better at navigating streets.
The tech company’s Waymo autonomous car project showed the most progress out of 11 companies in a report released by the California state DMV.
In the report, the DMV catalogued the number of times the self-driving cars had to be disengaged and taken over by a human.
Waymo stated that in 2016, its cars traveled 635,000 miles in suburban areas with 124 safety-related “disengagements.” Overall, the tests led to 0.2 disengagements per 1,000 miles driven, which was down from 0.8 disengagements per 1,000 miles from 2015.
In comparison, the report stated that Tesla Motors (now known as Tesla Inc.) logged only 550 miles on public roads, during which its cars disengaged 182 times.
Using the same per-thousand mile rate, that means Tesla disengagements worked out to nearly 331 times for every 1,000 miles.
Other companies had rare cases of disengagement but relatively low mileage recorded. For instance, BMW’s cars drove merely 638 miles and noted one case of disengagement accordingly.
Source: California DMV
Image credit: Wikipedia
