One of Google’s driverless cars has been involved in an accident for the first time in a situation where human drivers rely on the normal social etiquette of the road to avoid scrapes, according to an accident report filed in California.

美国加州一份交通事故报告显示，谷歌(Google)无人驾驶汽车首次卷入人类驾驶员依据避免刮蹭的常规道路交通礼仪可避免的交通事故。

The incident highlights the challenges of programming machines to deal with the sort of social situations that humans encounter every day on the roads, but which are beyond robots to resolve, experts said.

专家表示，这起事故凸显出了智能设备在应对各类社会场景方面面临的挑战，这些社会场景是人类每天在路上都会遇到的，但它们却超出了机器人的解决能力范围。

It also threatens to cast an unflattering light on the technology at a time when Google is fighting a proposed California rule requiring autonomous vehicles to have human drivers on hand to override their controls in emergencies.

这起事故还有可能对谷歌的无人驾驶技术带来负面影响。眼下，谷歌正在与加州的一项法规草案作斗争，该法规要求无人驾驶汽车必须配有人类驾驶员，以便在紧急情况下以手动方式控制汽车。

However, the company suggested that the accident would have occurred even if a human had been at the wheel, while adding that it had already adjusted its algorithms to take account of the lessons from the scrape.

但谷歌暗示，即使人类驾驶员当时接管了汽车的控制权，这起事故依然会发生。该公司还表示，已从这起剐蹭事故中吸取了教训，并据此调整了其算法。

“There are all sorts of social clues that people abide by that are hard to program into a car,” said Jerry Kaplan, a serial technology entrepreneur and author of a recent book on robotics. “There was nothing terrible about this, no one got hurt or killed. But it will be a long time before the cars can be driven in heavily used streets and abide by the same social conventions people use.”

连续创建多家科技企业的杰里•卡普兰(Jerry Kaplan)表示：“人类遵循的一些形形色色的社会线索，很难被编入汽车程序。这曾经没什么可怕的，没人因此受伤或死亡。不过，现在距无人驾驶汽车在繁忙的街道上行驶并遵守人类遵守的社会习俗，还有很长一段时间。”卡普兰近期出版了一本有关机器人的著作。

In a filing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Google said its car had been trying to pull out into slow-moving traffic on Valentine’s Day when a bus driver did not slow to leave room, causing a minor collision.

谷歌在提交给加州机动车辆管理局(Department of Motor Vehicles)的一份文件中表示，情人节这天，当一辆谷歌无人驾驶汽车试图变道并入缓慢移动的车流时，一名大巴司机并没有减速留出空间，导致两辆车发生轻微碰撞。

In a blog post on Monday, it blamed the accident on a “tricky set of circumstances” caused partly by an adjustment it had made to the car’s algorithms weeks earlier to help it drive more like a human.

在周一发表的一篇博文中，谷歌将这起事故归咎于“一系列棘手的情况”，而这些情况在一定程度上是由几周前谷歌对无人驾驶汽车算法做的调整导致的，那次调整旨在使其汽车的驾驶方式更像人类驾驶。

“This is a classic example of the negotiation that’s a normal part of driving — we’re all trying to predict each other’s movements,” the company said. “We clearly bear some responsibility.” However, it also said that a Google employee in the car had also believed there was room to pull out.

“这是一个关于协商的典型例子，而这种协商是驾驶的一个正常组成部分——我们都试图在预判对方的运动。”谷歌称，“我们显然负有部分责任。”但它还表示，当时坐在车内的谷歌员工也相信有空间可以并线。

The car had pulled close to the side of the road to make a turn, leaving room for other vehicles that were carrying on straight ahead to pass in the same lane — a manoeuvre Google said it had programmed into the car to make it a more considerate driver.

当时为了转弯，这辆汽车已靠近路边行驶，为同一车道内仍保持直行的其他车辆让出空间——谷歌表示，它已将这种机动动作编入汽车程序，以使其成为一个更顾及他人的驾驶者。

After finding its path was blocked by sandbags that had been placed round a drain, the car was forced to move back out into the line of traffic, causing the accident.

在发现前方道路被一堆沙袋（堆放在一条下水道周围）阻挡后，这辆谷歌汽车不得不驶回车流当中，由此造成了这起事故。

Google said it had already programmed lessons from the accident into its software, along with its findings from running simulations of thousands of similar situations.

谷歌表示，它已将该事故教训写入其软件中，一并写入的还有从对数千个类似情形的模拟中得出的研究发现。