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 ||||| 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. 
 
 ___ 
 
 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.
– It sounds as if Google is getting a bit fed up with the way distracted, flawed humans keep crashing into its self-driving cars. In the latest accident, which the AP reports is the first involving a Google car to cause human injury, a car rear-ended a stationary self-driving car at 17mph, causing minor whiplash to people in both vehicles. This is the 14th accident involving the self-driving cars, and Google says they have all been minor and all been the fault of the driver of the other vehicle. "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," self-driving car project chief Chris Urmson tells USA Today. In the accidents, which include 11 rear-enders, "the clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson writes in a Medium blog post. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers." Unlike humans, he notes, Google's cars "can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable, or distracted." He tells the AP that Google is looking into ways to alert distracted drivers when a collision with a self-driving car is imminent, although they suspect self-honking cars won't go down too well with the public.