Google's self-driving cars involved in 11 collisions

Internet search company Google's self-driving cars have been involved in 11 accidents, over the last six years since the project got underway, according to the director of the programme.

However, Google clarified its driver-less cars themselves had not been the cause of an accident.

Also no injuries had been reported.

A team of drivers testing the fleet of over 20 vehicles had logged 1.7 million miles with the vehicles so far.

"...Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident," Chris Urmson said in a post on technology news website Backchannel's blog Medium. He added there were no injuries in the accidents.

"If you spend enough time on the road, accidents will happen whether you're in a car or a self-driving car."

Seven of incidents had happened at traffic lights, when the cars had been hit from behind. The majority of the accidents had been on city streets rather than freeways.

"We'll continue to drive thousands of miles so we can all better understand the all-too common incidents that cause many of us to dislike day-to-day driving - and we'll continue to work hard on developing a self-driving car that can shoulder this burden for us," Urmson said.

According to Google none of the incidents had been due to the fault of the self-driving vehicle.

Google yesterday defended the safety of the driver-less cars it was testing in California and bared the automobile's record of collisions after a report noted four collisions involving the developing technology since September.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that three of the crashes in California in the past few months had invovled Google cars, citing an anonymous source.

Google and auto parts maker Delphi, which was operating the other self-driving car implicated in the report, told AP the collisions were minor and the fault was that of the other cars involved.

"Over the 6 years since we started the project, we've been involved in 11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries) during those 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel, and not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident," wrote Urmson.