# Self-Driving Car Safety Tests

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-car-safety-tests/721333>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 1, 2015, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-car-safety-tests/721333 "2015-06-01T13:37:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-car-safety-tests/721333/1 "2015-06-01T13:37:22Z")

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I read here and there that self-driving cars are proving safer than human-operated vehicles. What is the actual research behind this claim? Does it involve putting self-driving cars on the road with other, non-self-driven cars, in a variety of road conditions etc?

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/self-driving-car-safety-tests/721333/2 "2015-06-01T17:35:19Z")

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Here’s a blog post by the guy at Google in charge of the overall self-driving car project: [The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html)

Here’s a repost of another blog entry by him about their experience having accidents. [https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088](https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088)

The short version is so far they’ve driven a million miles on surface streets & highways amongst real traffic. Plus however much early testing was done on closed courses. And Google is far from the only player in this space.

Here’s the latest blog post from within the last month: [Green lights for our self-driving vehicle prototypes](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/self-driving-vehicle-prototypes-on-road.html)