Get PolitiFact in your inbox.
A driverless car has gone 300,000 miles without an accident, says Jeb Bush
Imagine while fighting through traffic that you could paint your toenails, play the guitar or read a novel -- but safely, because the car would be doing all the driving.
We’re not talking about a Jetsons make-believe scenario here: Several companies have autonomous or self-driving cars in the works. (Spoiler alert: the scenario we describe could be years away, and you might have to pay attention enough to grab the wheel.)
Former Gov. Jeb Bush mentioned such cars as an example of technological innovations during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 15, 2013.
"Driverless vehicles will flawlessly move people and products across our highways, never getting lost, never having accidents," said Bush, a potential Republican 2016 presidential candidate. "Already, a prototype driverless car has traveled more than 300,000 miles in the crowded maze of California streets without a single accident."
Has a driverless car really traveled 300,000 miles on crowded California streets without a single accident? PolitiFact hit the virtual road to find out.
A ride in a driverless car
Several car companies are developing so-called autonomous or self-driving cars operated by computers. But they may not be publicly available for at least a decade if not longer.
Among the challenges are the legal questions of who faces liability when a driverless crashes, as well as bringing down the $100,000 price tag for the technology.
But the technology is cool. Check out this Google video of a blind man taking a ride in the driver’s seat to Taco Bell ("Look ma no hands!").
A recent Forbes story offered a good first-hand account of riding at 65 miles per hour around Silicon Valley in a Lexus equipped with Google’s technology.
When a slow-moving truck merged onto the highway, the Google car hit the brakes on its own; the car also tracked a tailgater and a motorcyclist weaving in traffic.
The article explained that Google engineers gather information about the route and add it to maps before the self-driving takes off.
"When it’s the autonomous vehicle’s turn to drive, it compares the data it is acquiring from all those sensors and cameras to the previously recorded data," Forbes reported. "That helps it differentiate a pedestrian from a light pole."
The car has limitations. A Google official said that the car can’t handle heavy rain and or snow-covered roads, and engineers are working on how to handle encountering a stalled car or a tire in the middle of the road.
Florida, California and Nevada have all passed laws that allow testers to operate so-called autonomous cars.
In 2012, the Florida Legislature passed a law that requires humans in the cars to intervene if necessary. Testers must submit proof of $5 million in insurance. As of March 21, no testers have registered, said Leslie Palmer, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Bush’s spokeswoman referred us to an August 2012 Google blog: "Our vehicles, of which about a dozen are on the road at any given time, have now completed more than 300,000 miles of testing. They’ve covered a wide range of traffic conditions, and there hasn’t been a single accident under computer control."
Of those 300,000 miles, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said: "I think we’ve done 50,000 miles now without safety critical intervention. But that’s not good enough…The self-driving car is going to face greater scrutiny than any human would. And I think that’s appropriate."
A Google spokesman gave PolitiFact Florida a statement after Bush’s speech that the cars have actually driven over 500,000 miles on public roads.
Featured Fact-check
A Google car crash -- near headquarters
Google did face scrutiny in August 2011 when several blogs and news reports highlighted a car crash involving such a car near Google’s Mountain View headquarters.
"This photo of what looks like a minor case of Prius-on-Prius vehicular violence may actually be a piece of automotive history: the first accident caused by Google's self-driving car. Whose name should the cop write down on the ticket?" wrote the Jalopnik blog.
But Google said a human being was manually controlling the car when the accident occurred.
Mountain View police referred PolitiFact Florida to a Mountain View Voice article which quoted a police spokeswoman:
"Since it involved five vehicles, we wanted to make sure there were no injuries and facilitate the exchange of names. Essentially, it was five-car fender-bender. No one reported any injuries and so the officer simply facilitated the exchange of names. No case was taken."
The article also said that "Google claims the Google car was in between tests and that the accident was on a road that had not been mapped previously to allow it to drive autonomously on that section of street."
Popular Mechanics wrote that it had no reason to doubt Google’s word that a human caused the crash but noted, "With this accident, there's not much to go on besides Google's word." The crash raised the question if companies will provide law enforcement full access to verify if a person was driving at the time of the accident.
The only other report of a crash we could find was a New York Times 2010 story that said a Google car was rear-ended at a traffic light. Being rear-ended usually means the other driver is considered at fault.
Experts raise some caveats about the cars
We ran Bush’s claim by Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, who wrote a paper on the legality of automated cars. (The center publicly discloses its donors, which include Google and some car companies.) He said driverless cars haven’t traveled enough miles yet to prove their safety.
Based on the number of car crashes in the United States and the miles traveled, he concluded that Google's cars would need "to drive themselves (by themselves) more than 725,000 representative miles without incident for us to say with 99 percent confidence that they crash less frequently than conventional cars. If we look only at fatal crashes, this minimum skyrockets to 300 million miles. To my knowledge, Google has yet to reach these milestones."
Smith said that Bush’s claim is a good faith summary of the media reports; however, it omits some caveats.
"These are testers who are being closely supervised by highly trained drivers who do occasionally intervene in the operation," he said. "That is very different from sending a vehicle unmonitored through a variety of road conditions. ... Although Google has logged impressive miles, and demonstrated other statistics that they are more safe than human drivers, that is not publicly documented at this point and there is an incredible amount of research required."
He also said we shouldn’t expect cars that function completely without human intervention of some sort.
"‘Driverless car’ is probably not the right word for the kind of vehicle we are talking about," he told PolitiFact Florida. "Driving will be shared with a computer either simultaneously or sequentially. A human may need to do some functions of the driver, and the computer may augment functions of humans depending on road conditions and kind of road."
Our ruling
During his CPAC speech, Bush talked about technological innovations underway and that will occur over the next 100 years.
"Already, a prototype driverless car has traveled more than 300,000 miles in the crowded maze of California streets without a single accident," Bush said.
We don’t fault Bush for citing the 300,000 figure rather than the recent 500,000 figure, because that higher number only received publicity after the CPAC speech.
But technically, Bush was wrong to say that the prototype car has driven in California "without a single accident." We found two accidents, but they both had mitigating factors. One car was rear ended, which suggests another driver was at fault. In another accident, a human was operating the car, at least according to Google.
Still, we couldn’t find one incident where a driverless car operating under its own technology clearly caused an accident. We rate this claim Mostly True.
Our Sources
YouTube, Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s speech at Conservative Political Action Conference, March 15, 2013
Google blog, "What we’re driving at," Oct. 9, 2010
Google blog, "The self-driving car logs more miles on new wheels," Aug. 7, 2012
Google, "Self-driving car test: Steve Mahan,’’ Accessed March 22, 2013
Florida House, H.B. 1207 final bill analysis, Bill approved by Gov. Rick Scott April 13, 2012
California Senate Bill 1298, Approved by the Governor Sept. 25, 2012
Nevada 482A Autonomous vehicles law, 2011
Forbes, "No hands, no feet: My unnerving ride in Google’s driverless car," March 21, 2013
NPR, "If a driverless car crashes who is at fault?" March 8, 2013
Bryant Walker Smith at The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law school, "Automated vehicles are probably legal in the United States," Nov. 1, 2012
The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, Funding and support policies, Accessed March 22, 2013
Jalopnik blog, "This is Google’s first self-driving car crash," Aug. 5, 2011
Mountain View Voice, "Google’s self-driving car in 5-car crash," Aug. 8, 2011
Car Connection, "Autonomous cars are coming: will you buy one?" April 30, 2012
Popular Mechanics, "4 Questions about Google’s self-driving car crash," Aug. 11, 2011
MoneyWeb, "Google driverless car zero accident rate to shape motor industry," March 17, 2013
NBC, "Google blames human for robot car crash," Aug. 6, 2011
Business Insider, "Human driver crashes Google’s self-driving car," Aug. 5, 2011
The Verge, "Self-driving cars can navigate the road, but can they navigate the law?," Dec. 14, 2012
San Francisco Chronicle, "Calif. gives driver-less cars go ahead," Sept. 26, 2012
The Atlantic, "Google’s self-driving cars, 300,000 miles logged, not a single accident under computer control," Aug. 9, 2012
New York Times, "Google cars can drive themselves, in traffic," Oct. 10, 2010
Tech Crunch, "Google’s self-driving cars complete 300k miles without accident, deemed ready for commuting," Aug. 7, 2012
Network World, "Toyota to show off autonomous prototype car at CES show," Jan. 4, 2013
Interview, Bryant Walker Smith, fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, March 22, 2013
Interview, Melanie Hinton, spokeswoman, Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, March 22, 2013
Interview, Michael Toscano, president, Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, March 22, 2013
Interview, Jay Nancarrow, Google spokesman, March 21, 2013
Interview, Jaryn Emhof, Jeb Bush spokeswoman, March 22, 2013
Interview, Armando Botello, spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, March 21, 2013
Interview, David Fierro, spokesman Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, March 21, 2013
Interview, Leslie Palmer, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, March 21, 2013
Browse the Truth-O-Meter
More by Amy Sherman
A driverless car has gone 300,000 miles without an accident, says Jeb Bush
Support independent fact-checking.
Become a member!
In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts.