People do the craziest things around Google’s self-driving cars--see for yourselfApr 6(AZINS) Self-driving cars have made pretty massive strides since the idea first too serious root--from the DARPA Grant Challenge in 2003 that offered a prize for an autonomous vehicle that could successfully drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, to Google’s self-driving cars now clocking 1.4 million miles on actual road testing since the programme started in 2009, we are closer by magnitudes to the reality of a car that truly drives itself.

Over the years, Google’s self-driving cars have ‘learned’ from a myriad of situations as diverse as freeway driving, residential neighbourhoods and dense city regions. With the wealth of sensor and situational data collected over the course of these tests, the Google self-driving team uses supercomputers to developing ever-smarter algorithms to push ahead the science of autonomous driving.

But just like regular drivers are wont to witness their fair share of unusual--sometimes unbelievable--situations over the course of their driving lives, so do self driving cars apparently.

As part of a talk delivered by Chris Urmson, Director of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, he revealed some pretty hilarious, and often bizarre, episodes of their self-driving cars having encountered. From a wheelchair-bound woman chasing a duck with a broom in the street, to a group of people randomly leapfrogging across the car’s path… you get the picture.

Mirth aside, it’s actually quite fascinating to see the manner in which the software and AI driving these cars are dealing with such unprecedented situations. Other than doing something untoward, the cars simply slow down, wait for the spectacle to end, then proceed along their way. Just like a good human driver would.