Google lost one of its executives at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival earlier this week. The Cannes Lion festival, a gathering of the global advertising industry, took a tragic turn when a male exec was hit by a car.
Second incident for Google
A male executive, whose name or identity is not disclosed by Google out of respect to his family privacy, was an employee of Google’s UK marketing team, says a report from Business Insider. The executive was in San Francisco for the Cannes Lions advertising festival this week when he was struck by a taxi.
Google, which has become one of the biggest companies to attend the annual advertising industry award event, released a brief statement, saying “We lost a loved and respected member of our team. We are deeply saddened and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”
According to a statement given by the local police to CNN, a 30-year-old U.K. resident died in an accident involving a taxi on a public highway on the night of June 21. This is a second heart-breaking loss for Google in the past few months. The first was in April during the Nepal earthquake, when Google executive Dan Fredinburg died while climbing Mt. Everest.
Driverless cars could likely have prevented this death
This accident provides yet another reason for Google to come up with driverless cars, which remove human error. Though designed by humans, time and again technology has proved that it can perform most repetitive tasks more efficiently than humans.
Google’s driverless cars have been seen regularly on the streets of California lately, racking up a total of more than 1.7 million miles so far with the fleet. The good news is that the accident rate is quite low.
If the technological assumptions are right, one day these driverless machines will be able to reduce the death rate due to reckless driving or human error. They can take to the road themselves, instructed by their software, which control their satellite navigation systems, and other computer aids that run road-traffic signals and flows.
