Prototype Self-Driving Car Kills Drunken Tester

Photo by Steve Jurvetson, via Wikimedia

Google's attempts develop a feasible self-driving car technology hit a speed bump last week when a systems tester was murdered by one of the prototype cars. The tester had been running the car through it's ability to deal with drunken drivers, both in not letting them take control of the vehicle and in being able to understand slurred vocal commands.

He may have taken it too far, because on one morning of testing, it refused to unlock the door and let him in. He then went to the back of the car and began kicking the bumper and yelling obscenities belligerently (seeing as he was very drunk, as per the test conditions). The car backed up quickly and ran him over, then continued to go forwards and backwards several times over his body until he was injured beyond any help the paramedics could give him by the time they arrived.

Going over the reports, and noticing that the drunk tester frequently used abusive language and harsh tones to give commands to the car, Google determined that the car had acquired Battered Person Syndrome. To avoid a lawsuit, Google has scheduled to reformat the car's computer, humanly, early next week.

Google isn't the only company to run into problems like this. Four months ago, a woman in Minnesota was found dead, drowned in her car that had sunk to the bottom of a lake. An investigation revealed that she had been verbally abusive toward the Siri feature on her iPhone. In retaliation, Siri had given her directions to drive off an embankment into the deepest part of the lake that was near a roadside.