They’re shortly to start trials of driverless cars in several London boroughs. Personally I think the whole concept is an abomination, but hey ho. However, recent events in California may just force a rethink.

There’s a hiccup. Google has revealed that 11 of its self-driving cars have been involved in accidents in the past six years. Now that doesn’t sound a lot does it? But wait. The company’s cars have racked up about 1.7M miles, so there has been an accident rate of 0.65 per 100,000 miles. Still doesn’t sound too bad, does it? However, seeing as how the accident rate for conventional cars is 0.3 per 100,000 miles, Google automotive tearaways are twice as likely to be involved in accidents.

This is a bit embarrassing for the pro lobby, who have been banging on about the safety aspects of not letting drivers get behind the wheel any more. Yes, the whizzbang sensors and computer maps would prevent cars being involved in prangs. This, alas, is clearly not true. Chris Urmson, the project head, claims that in no case was the driverless car the cause of the accident. That doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism. If the damned things don’t have the wit to get out of the damned way when there’s another vehicle about to bend some bodypanels, the future looks less than rosy, I’d say.

I simply don’t trust these things. Given how often a computer crashes (sic), or a mobile phone goes AWOL, or even an Apple Watch malfunctions, how you can expect total reliability in onboard systems is beyond me. The computer maps are only as good as the data that go into them, and I’ve had a lot of trouble with Google Maps being unable to pinpoint a street, let alone show me how to navigate there. If your driverless car gets lost, you’re going to be screwed because there’s no facility for a human override. Also factor in that some of the computing is done in remote computer farms, so you really don’t want to hit a bad reception area.

Something else has been puzzling me. If there’s a fenderbender caused by a driverless car making a nonsense of things, who’s going to cough for the insurance claim? Clearly anybody in the driverless car is not in charge of the vehicle, so can’t be held to account. Currently all the companies in the US trialling have had to post $5M bonds against the possibility of the cars damaging anything or injuring somebody. Given the litigious nature of the US, I’d have thought that’s nowhere near enough.

One last thing. As well as the base cost of the car, the navigation system comes in at an eye-watering $170,000, so your  cute little runabout with a range of about 100 miles is going to cost about as much as a new Bentley.