One of Google's self-driving cars has its first accident involving injuries (but it wasn't the one at fault)

Google's self-driving car has been in its first accident involving injuries after the high-tech, camera-equipped Lexus was rear-ended by a distracted driver in Mountain View, California. The three Google employees who were riding in the car were taken to a local hospital where they were treated for minor whiplash before being released. The driver of the other car also reported having neck and back pain.

Since 2009, Google's self-driving cars have been involved in 14 accidents, and according to Chris Urmson, the leader of the company's self-driving car program, not once has the driverless car been at fault. Those Google-logoed Lexuses have been rear-ended 11 times – including twice last month – which is an incredibly small number considering that its 25 car fleet has driven 1.9 million miles during that six-year period. That's almost the same distance as making four round-trips from here to the moon.

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In a blog post for Medium, Urmson posted a video of the most recent accident, which occurred during rush hour traffic on July 1. He wrote:

The light was green, but traffic was backed up on the far side, so three cars, including ours, braked and came to a stop so as not to get stuck in the middle of the intersection. After we’d stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17 mph — and it hadn’t braked at all. [O]ur braking was normal and natural, and the vehicle behind us had plenty of stopping distance — but it never decelerated. This certainly seems like the driver was distracted and not watching the road ahead.

Urmson says that there's a "silver lining" to the number of accidents that the self-driving cars have been involved in. He explains that, since up to 55% of crashes go unreported (and, so far, none of Google's accidents have required a police report) it's difficult to know the real statistics for how the self-driving cars compare to their more crash-prone human counterparts. Now, he says, the cars are being slammed into often enough that the company can begin to compile its own – perhaps more accurate – data about the rate of crashes-per-miles-driven. So keep doing what you're doing, humans!