Google's driverless cars follow all the traffic rules perfectly. That's actually a big problem.

Google's self-driving cars are really, really good at following traffic safety rules. But they still get into crashes — because human drivers are so bad at following the rules.

Since 2009, Google's driverless cars have been in 16 car crashes, with every single case being the fault of a human driver. The company was responsible for a crash only once — when a human employee, and not the computer, was controlling the self-driving car. Indeed, when Google's driverless cars follow the rules to the T, they actually get into trouble:

"The real problem is that the car is too safe," one expert explained. "They have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture."

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Consider:

Dmitri Dolgov, the head of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, was blunt about the solution: For driverless cars to work the way they're supposed to, human drivers simply need to be "less idiotic."