Self-driving cars nearly collide with each other, but companies say 'nothing to see here'

It sounds like a scene from a straight-to-DVD animated movie, but two rival self-driving cars almost collided in the middle of a Silicon Valley street earlier this week. The futuristic-sounding near miss happened when Google's autonomous Lexus RH400h prototype cut off Delphi's Audi Q5 when it attempted to change lanes. The Audi quickly corrected itself and moved back into its original lane. Both cars had humans that could've taken control of the vehicles, but the cars seem to have handled the situation on their own.

Although Reuters highlighted that this was the "first such incident" in which two automated cars had a near-collision, both companies were quick to shrug it off, with their respective spokespeople issuing "nothing to see here"-ish statements. Kristin Kinley, a Delphi spokesperson, told Ars Technica that it was far from being a near miss. She said:

Our car did exactly what it was supposed to. Our car saw the Google car move into the same lane as our car was planning to move into, but upon detecting that the lane was no longer open it decided to terminate the move and wait until it was clear again.

And Google's own Courtney Hohne added, "The headline here is that two self-driving cars did what they were supposed to do in an ordinary everyday driving scenario." Both cars were equipped with similar technology, including lasers, radar, special computer and cameras that allow the cars to safely drive themselves – and to swiftly and safely react to obstacles, pedestrians or other vehicles.

In a report released in May, Google revealed that its self-driving cars had been involved in 11 accidents since 2009, but only two of those incidents happened when the on-board computer was piloting the vehicle. The technology, the company points out, makes its autonomous fleet twice as safe as cars driven by humans. Google has since announced that it will release a monthly safety report giving all of the highlights – and any relevant lowlights – from its 23 Lexus SUVs and 9 prototypes. And we'd bet that there's zero chance that we'll be reading about this Delphi non-incident in the next one.