Google self-driving car drives more carefully around children

Google claims it has taught its self-driving cars to behave differently around children. The internet giant carries out training courses to recognize children in ‘all kinds of shapes and sizes’, and to adjust the behavior of the car accordingly.

The company made this known in a post posted on the social network Google+. As part of Halloween, the internet giant let children in various costumes walk past Google’s self-driving car while it was parked. As a result, the system learned to recognize children in all kinds of ‘shapes’ through its sensors. This should ensure that the car becomes better at detecting children in traffic.

Google has built in a separate detection system for children, because they more often exhibit dangerous behavior in traffic situations than adult pedestrians. Because the behavior of children in front of the car is less easy to predict, people drive with more caution.

The internet giant has been testing its self-driving car for some time now. The company states that after more than a million kilometers on the road, it has not yet been involved in accidents where the car itself was at fault.