Self driving cars are supposed to create accident free motoring, but newly released figures show that Google self drive cars have been involved in 11 minor traffic accidents in the past six years. In its defence Google says that with all of the incidents other drivers were at fault, all of the accidents could be categorised as light damage with no injuries and this had all happened over 1.7million miles of driving.

Regulators in California who grant licenses for self drive tests have now insisted that any accident data be released by license holders. This means other tester, such as Delphi Automotive, have also filed an accident report, which again was the fault of another driver. The car was not in self drive mode at the time.

Google is currently running 20+ self drive cars in California tests, mainly converted Lexus SUV models. The technology giant has also released details of a number of incidents where its cars were able to avoid accidents through it active self drive technology. 

Chris Urmson, Director of the Google Self-Driving Car program says that it is continuing to test and refine its vehicle's software, hardware, and sensors, with the eventual goal of having a safe vehicle with no human controls at all. He says, "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."