When most people are driving in their car and hear an ambulance or police siren, they immediately begin paying extra attention.
This is not only because they don’t want to get a ticket, it’s also because most of the time it’s hard to tell initially where exactly the sound is coming from and they want to be alert so that they know how to respond.
Google’s self-driving cars work in a similar manner.
The vehicles are equipped with all kinds of sensors to process the world around them. But they are also programmed to recognize a library of emergency sirens so that they can better access their environment when they aren’t quite sure what’s going on.
“As soon as we’re alerted, our cars drive more conservatively (e.g., slowing down a bit or avoiding entering an intersection) until we have a better sense of where the sirens are coming from,” the company said in its monthly self-driving car project report published Tuesday.
However, unlike human drivers, Google’s cars don’t just pay extra attention when they are alerted by the sound of a siren. The cars are decked out with sensors that help it pay extra attention all the time.
“Even if sirens aren’t sounding, our cameras are on the lookout for emergency vehicles and are designed to detect flashing lights. So if a fire truck is coming through an intersection, we’ll stop and let it through. Or if an emergency vehicle is approaching from behind, we’ll slow down and pull over until we know it’s safe to resume the journey,” the company said in its report.
In other words, its autonomous vehicles are always extra cautious. While that bodes well for safety, it’s not something humans are exactly use to yet.
Last month, a Mountain View police officer pulled over one of Google’s self-driving cars without initially realizing it because traffic was backing up behind it at an intersection.
The car was traveling 24 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour lane, which is completely legal. However, the police officer still took the opportunity to “educate the operators about impeding traffic,” according to the police department's blog.
Google said in a blog post it has capped the speed of its prototype vehicles at 25 miles per hour for safety reasons, and pointed out that it still hasn’t been ticketed.
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
