Google driverless car crash results in injuries

Just like the 14 others involving its self-driving vehicles, the accident was not Google's fault, search giant claims

Google has admitted its self-driving cars are being hit "surprisingly often" after a crash involving one of its fleet resulted in minor injuries to those involved.

The search giant revealed in a blog that one of its self-driving SUVs was rear-ended in Mountain View on 1 July after the car behind it crashed into it at 17mph.

The collision, the 15th since the start of Google's self-driving car project in 2009, resulted in minor whiplash for the three people inside, namely the obligatory safety driver and the two passengers in the back.

The incident comes after security vendor Kaspersky Lab warned over the security implications of driverless cars, claiming it would currently take "just seconds" to destroy a connected vehicle.

Google released a simulation of the accident which shows its car braking normally and stopping ahead of an intersection. The car behind it slammed into is rear end after failing to decelerate.

A video of how Google's driverless car sees the road can also be viewed here.

"Other drivers have hit us 14 times since the start of our project in 2009 (including 11 rear-enders), and not once has the self-driving car been the cause of the collision. Instead, the clear theme is human error and inattention," Google's Chris Urmson said in the blog.

With Google's cars now self-driving about 10,000 miles a week, Urmson said assumptions can start to be made about its crashes-per-miles-driven rate and he admitted the figure is "looking higher than we thought".

In a recent talk at TED 2014, Urmson said Google was committed to launching the technology into the market in less than five years, Tech.co reported.