LOS ANGELES (AP) — The self-driving cars that Google Inc. has been testing on California's roads and highways were involved in 11 minor accidents over the past six years, according to the tech giant. 
 
 FILE - This May 13, 2014 file photo shows a row of Google self-driving Lexus cars at a Google event outside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Of the nearly 50 self-driving cars rolling... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This May 13, 2014 file photo shows a row of Google self-driving Lexus cars at a Google event outside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Of the nearly 50 self-driving cars rolling... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This May 13, 2014 file photo shows a Google self-driving Lexus at a Google event outside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Of the nearly 50 self-driving cars rolling around California... (Associated Press) 
 
 The company released the number Monday after The Associated Press reported that Google had notified California of three collisions involving its self-driving cars since September, when reporting all accidents became a legal requirement as part of the permits for the tests on public roads. 
 
 The director of Google's self-driving car project wrote in a web post that all 11 accidents were minor — "light damage, no injuries" — and happened over 1.7 million miles of testing, including nearly 1 million miles in self-driving mode. 
 
 "Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident," wrote Google's Chris Urmson. 
 
 It was not possible to independently verify Google's assertions about the fault and nature of the collisions. The company would not release accident documentation, and the California Department of Motor Vehicles said it could not discuss details, citing confidentiality. The agency has licensed just 48 of these test cars. 
 
 An accident caused by a self-driving car is a fear of the people developing them, whether at Google or one of the traditional automakers. That's not just because if the accident is particularly horrific, public and political acceptance of the technology would suffer badly. It's also because the reaction to the first car-caused accident will set a precedent in terms of financial liability. 
 
 "Assuming that you are not dead, you are in a much better positon than if you had been hit by an ordinary, human-driven vehicle," said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied issues about the cars. 
 
 That's because the company behind the car will have deep pockets. California law makes it hard for any but major companies or very wealthy individual to test the cars. Each one requires $5 million worth of insurance. 
 
 Given the potential for bad publicity, the company will have strong incentive to settle any lawsuit quickly and generously, Smith said. 
 
 Three other states have passed laws welcoming tests of self-driving cars onto their roads. Regulators in Nevada, Michigan and Florida told The Associated Press that they weren't aware of any accidents. 
 
 If a car in self-driving mode hits a pedestrian, the case becomes a matter of product liability. 
 
 California law has a definition of a design defect that would favor a person who is hit, said Robert W. Peterson, insurance law expert and law professor at Santa Clara University. 
 
 If the car "fails to behave in a way which a reasonable consumer would expect it to behave, that is a defect," Peterson said. The cars have a clear picture of their surroundings more than a football field away. If a person reasonably expects that one of the cars would stop rather than strike, that could create liability. 
 
 Because the cars are required to record and store the last 30 seconds of a data before any accident, reconstructing what happened should be easier, at least. 
 
 Google has modified 23 Lexus SUVs registered with DMV. 
 
 The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had one accident, which an accident report the company provided the AP showed was not its fault. Delphi said at the time the car was being driven by the person the DMV requires behind the wheel during testing. 
 
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 Contact Justin Pritchard at http://twitter.com/lalanewsman. ||||| LOS ANGELES (AP) — Google Inc. revealed Thursday that one of its self-driving car prototypes was involved in an injury accident for the first time. 
 
 FILE - In this May 13, 2015, file photo, Google's self-driving Lexus car drives along street during a demonstration at Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. Google says that one of its self-driving cars... (Associated Press) 
 
 In the collision, a Lexus SUV that the tech giant outfitted with sensors and cameras was rear-ended in Google's home city of Mountain View, where more than 20 prototypes have been self-maneuvering through traffic. 
 
 The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain. 
 
 In California, a person must be behind the wheel of a self-driving car being tested on public roads to take control in an emergency. Google typically sends another employee in the front passenger seat to record details of the ride on a laptop. In this case, there was also a back seat passenger. 
 
 Google has invested heavily as a pioneer of self-driving cars, technology it believes will be safer and more efficient than human drivers. 
 
 This was the 14th accident in six years and about 1.9 million miles of testing, according to the company. Google has said that its cars have not caused any of the collisions — though in 2011 an employee who took a car to run an errand rear-ended another vehicle while the Google car was out of self-driving mode. 
 
 In 11 of the 14, Google said its car was rear-ended. 
 
 In a blog posted Thursday, the head of Google's self-driving car program, Chris Urmson, wrote that his SUVs "are being hit surprisingly often" by distracted drivers, perhaps people looking at their phones. 
 
 "The clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson wrote. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers." 
 
 In a telephone interview, Urmson said his team was exploring whether its cars could do something to alert distracted drivers before a collision. Honking would be one possibility, but Urmson said he worried that could start to annoy residents of Mountain View. 
 
 According to an accident report that Google filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles about the July 1 crash: 
 
 Google's SUV was going about 15 mph in self-driving mode behind two other cars as the group approached an intersection with a green light. 
 
 The first car slowed to a stop so as not to block the intersection — traffic on the far side was not moving. The Google car and the other car in front of it also stopped. 
 
 Within about a second, a fourth vehicle rear-ended the Google car at about 17 mph. On-board sensors showed the other car did not brake. 
 
 The driver of that car reported "minor neck and back pain." The SUV's rear bumper was slightly damaged, while the vehicle that struck it lost its front bumper. 
 
 Mountain View police responded, but did not file an accident report. 
 
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 Contact Justin Pritchard at http://twitter.com/lalanewsman . ||||| (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google said on Monday it bears “some responsibility” after one of its self-driving cars struck a municipal bus in a minor crash earlier this month. 
 
 A prototype of Google's own self-driving vehicle is seen during a media preview of Google's current autonomous vehicles in Mountain View, California September 29, 2015. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage 
 
 The crash may be the first case of one of its autonomous cars hitting another vehicle and the fault of the self-driving car. The Mountain View, California-based Internet search leader said it made changes to its software after the crash to avoid future incidents. 
 
 In a Feb. 23 report filed with California regulators, Google said the crash took place in Mountain View on Feb. 14 when a self-driving Lexus RX450h sought to get around some sandbags in a wide lane. 
 
 Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour. 
 
 The vehicle and the test driver “believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue,” it said. 
 
 But three seconds later, as the Google car in autonomous mode re-entered the center of the lane, it struck the side of the bus, causing damage to the left front fender, front wheel and a driver side sensor. No one was injured in the car or on the bus. 
 
 Google said in a statement on Monday that “we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that.” 
 
 The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority will investigate the circumstances of the accident, Stacey Hendler Ross, spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, said on Monday. 
 
 She said the Google car caused minor damage to the bus, striking the “pivoting joint,” or flexible area in the middle of the articulated bus. After the crash, 15 passengers on the bus were transferred to another bus. 
 
 An investigation to determine liability is pending, she said. 
 
 John M. Simpson, privacy project director for advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, said the crash “is more proof that robot car technology is not ready for auto pilot.” 
 
 A spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles said on Monday it will speak to Google to gather additional information, but added “the DMV is not responsible for determining fault.” 
 
 SOFTWARE REFINED 
 
 Google said it has reviewed this incident “and thousands of variations on it in our simulator in detail and made refinements to our software. From now on, our cars will more deeply understand that buses (and other large vehicles) are less likely to yield to us than other types of vehicles, and we hope to handle situations like this more gracefully in the future.” 
 
 There has been no official determination of fault in the crash. Google has previously said that its autonomous vehicles have never been at fault in any crashes. 
 
 The Mountain View Police Department said no police report was filed in the incident. 
 
 A spokesman for the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration declined to comment. 
 
 The crash comes as Google has been making the case that it should be able to test vehicles without steering wheels and other controls. 
 
 In December, Google criticized California for proposing regulations that would require autonomous cars to have a steering wheel, throttle and brake pedals when operating on public roads. A licensed driver would need to be ready to take over if something went wrong. 
 
 Google said in November that in six years of its self-driving project, it has been involved in 17 minor accidents during more than two million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined. 
 
 “Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident,” Google said at the time. ||||| Chris Urmson, far right, shows off his project's self-driving pod to Google chairman Eric Schmidt and U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. (Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images) 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO - Picture the sad sack who has a sign saying "Kick me" taped to his back. Google's self-driving cars can relate, only the sign seems to say "Hit me." 
 
 Just weeks after reporting to the California Department of Motor Vehicles that its gadget-packed Lexus SUVs had been hit twice in the rear bumper while waiting at stop lights in Mountain View, Calif., Google reported Thursday that on July 1 a motorist smashed into its stationary autonomous vehicle at 17 mph, resulting in minor whiplash to passengers in both cars and causing the offending car's front bumper to fall off. 
 
 "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," Google self-driving car project director Chris Urmson tells USA TODAY. "None of our accidents rise to the level of police reports. So what we are experiencing is what the road is really like." 
 
 This marks the 14th time Google's fleet has been in an accident since the search company began trolling the streets of its headquarters in 2009. In every instance, other motorists have been at fault, Google says. These accidents may soon grow in number as Google recently began mapping the streets of Austin, Texas, and added its new pod-like two-person cars to Silicon Valley roads. 
 
 To date, Google's autonomous vehicles have logged nearly 2 million miles, and add around 10,000 new miles of data each week. All of its cars are accompanied by law by safety drivers. 
 
 The July 1 accident, which is the focus of Urmson's latest blog post and a video that shows a computer readout of the incident, would appear to be another example of humans making Google's point: That distracted driving in the age of smartphones and social media is a growing menace that might benefit from us turning much of that task over to robots. 
 
 Skeptics, who include leaders of auto companies focused more on driver-assist technology, argue that fully autonomous cars come with regulatory, insurance and hacking liabilities. 
 
 In his blog post, Urmson writes: "Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road. That's a big motivator for us." 
 
 Urmson goes on to say that according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration some 55% of minor accidents go unreported often despite police being on the scene. That was in fact the case for the July 1 crash, which was the result of Google's car stopping at an green-lit intersection - along with other motorists - because the traffic ahead was backed up. 
 
 Writes Urmson: "Our self-driving cars can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable or distracted. People, on the other hand, 'drive as if the world is a television show viewed on TiVo that can be paused in real time – one can duck out for a moment, grab a beer from the fridge, and come back to right where they left off without missing a beat,' to quote Sheila Klauer of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. That's certainly consistent with what we're seeing." 
 
 Also Thursday, Google beat Wall Street earnings expectations and saw its stock shoot up 3.5% in after hours trading to $579. 
 
 Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava on Twitter: @marcodellacava 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1J3kaRi ||||| Eleven driverless vehicles have been involved in minor accidents on California roads over the past six years during testing, Google said Monday, stressing that none of its cars were at fault in any of the incidents. 
 
 The company made the admission after a reported from the Associated Press said two Google driverless cars, while controlled by computers, were involved in accidents since last fall when the state gave the company official permission to start testing the technology on public roads. Nobody was hurt in any of the crashes, Google said. 
 
 But in the wake of the accidents, the police reports were not made public in accordance with California law. Google did not release the reports either — a practice could hurt the very future of driverless cars that several technology companies are trying to build. 
 
 Proponents of self-driving cars argue that computer-driven vehicles can help improve automotive safety by reacting more quickly to oncoming dangers and keeping a better eye on the environment, reducing the risk of driver error. But the public lacks objective data about whether that’s true in practice or even potentially true. 
 
 Earning drivers’ trust is going to be one of the biggest challenges for driverless car manufacturers. Giving up the steering wheel to a computer just won’t come naturally to many people. Nor will the prospect of having to share the road with machines that can make their own decisions. 
 
 ”Safety is our highest priority,” said Google in a statement. “Since the start of our program six years ago, we’ve driven nearly a million miles autonomously, on both freeways and city streets, and the self-driving car hasn’t caused a single accident.” 
 
 Add it all up and the message seems pretty clear: The autopilot was not the problem. 
 
 But what would really bolster people’s confidence is if the companies could prove that the autopilot performed well at preventing or avoiding a crash — not merely that it wasn’t the cause of a crash. 
 
 In two of the crashes, according to the AP, the driverless car features were engaged and no human was behind the wheel. Understanding exactly how the self-driving cars behaved under these conditions — and in similar situations to come — will be the key to showing whether driverless cars really are better or safer than humans behind the wheel. 
 
 Imagine a world in which driverless cars are the only types of car on the road. In this hypothetical universe, driverless cars are completely safe. Each vehicle behaves predictably according to its programming, so the interactions between those cars become predictable events as well. In this universe, the inattentiveness, speeding, road rage and the half-dozen other reasons accidents happen today would have been eradicated. 
 
 The world we inhabit today is far messier. For the foreseeable future, self-driving cars will have to respond to all the crazy things human drivers do, such as cutting other people off, texting behind the wheel, or driving drunk. 
 
 If the police reports show there was nothing the autopilot could have done to prevent a crash, that’s a clear point in favor of driverless car manufacturers — especially if the reports also suggest that a human driver would have fared no better. 
 
 But suppose the crashes involved a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler whose lights were flashing and horn was blasting, and the driverless car missed all the signs. That would be a big problem. 
 
 The fact that we don’t really know, and that the state of California won’t release the reports, could become a setback for the adoption of driverless cars. We are left with voluntary disclosures by individual manufacturers to fill the gap. On Monday, Google published a post explaining that its cars have been in 11 “minor” accidents, 7 of which occurred when another driver rear-ended them. The blog post also highlights cases where the autopilot successfully avoided crash risks even as other drivers were behaving dangerously in the situation. But the full police reports were not released. 
 
 This type of crash and near-crash information, particularly on a large scale, could help consumers make informed decisions about whether to get a self-driving car if and when they finally make it to market.
– Google's fleet of 23 self-driving Lexuses has been involved in 11 accidents over the past six years of testing in California—but the company says not one of those incidents was the fault of a Google car, the AP reports. Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving initiative, writes in a Medium blog post that its vehicles—which have logged 1.7 million miles—had accidents that involved "light damage, no injuries"; seven of the cars were rear-ended (usually at traffic lights) and most of the accidents took place on city streets, not highways, Reuters notes. Urmson also lists other reasons why cars may get into accidents other than not having a driver: tricky intersections and turns, people not paying attention (he even cites one driver spotted playing the trumpet). The accidents are being labeled as minor and somewhat typical—Urmson notes "if you spend enough time on the road, accidents will happen whether you're in a car or a self-driving car"— and advocates for driverless cars say they actually improve safety because the cars are constantly scanning the environment for accident-causing factors and may react more quickly, the Washington Post notes. A nonprofit watchdog is trying to get both Google and the California DMV to release full reports for these accidents and any future incidents, but that doesn't seem to be happening: The DMV is citing confidentiality laws and won't give access, while Google (for now) is declining comment, per the Wall Street Journal. (A Google Street View car that got into an accident had a human driver.)