content: Here's a quick snip  1db3  pet that addresses your question:   One of Google's problems, however, is that its cars are even more neurotic than humans. They brake at the slightest possibility of trouble. Or what a computer might think is trouble. In essence, they maneuver like a first-time visitor to a distant country. With jet lag. There are so many permutations in possible human behavior that even if the computer can register them all, there's little hope that it will still react in real time to what is actually happening, rather than what it fears might happen. At least not yet. Many of the accidents involving self-driving cars -- none was serious -- involve Google's car being rear-ended. Google engineer told Nathaniel Fairfield told the Journal: "We clearly are a little jerkier than we would like. But all of these cases have been when we are sitting still." One example of humanistic behavior is that we don't take turns in a perfect arc. We cut corners when we can. Google has had to teach its cars to do the same.  There's an argument to be made that having more "humanistic" behavior would make self-driving cars more predictable.  I'd be curious to see if the data backs up this argument or if there's a way to test it scientifically.  The number of incidents involving self-driving cars is very small, so it's difficult to identify trends.