Earlier this year, search engine giant Google (News - Alert) showed off its cutting-edge, self-driving cars to a select group of attendees and journalists at the Technology Entertainment Design conference. Up until today, Google’s fleet of autonomous vehicles traveled 140,000 miles without an accident.

The irony? The accident was caused by a human.

The made-over Prius loaded with software that could only come from the brains behind Google, features of which include a set of short-range radar sensors and video cameras to a persistent Internet connection that constantly scans Google Maps for road and traffic updates, rear ended another Prius.

Back in May, Google had been lobbying for Nevada lawmakers to allow Google’s self-driving cars to become available within the state. Google had hired LA’s Vegas lobbyist David Goldwater to alter existing Nevada state laws. Two key changes need to be made, the first would be a bill allowing for the licensing and testing of autonomous cars, while a second would then deal with issues of distracted driving, essentially allowing for the ‘driver’ of the car to text while driving, as he or she really wouldn’t be in control of the vehicle anyway.

The project’s creator and former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun has been a vocal proponent of autonomous cars, claiming they would cut down on pollution and drastically reduce the number of road fatalities caused by human error.

Of course, no quote from him on today’s goings on could be found at the time of this report.

The question remains, however, whose name goes on the accident report when there is no driver behind the wheel?

Since this particular accident was, in fact, caused by human error, the answer would naturally fall on the shoulders of the one “behind the curtain,” but when these vehicles become completely autonomous, will the software be to blame?

The issues were always focused on liability and safety, despite the clean driving record reports of test models. With six Toyota Priuses and one Audi TT as the vehicles-turned-autonomous, each vehicle is overseen by a driver and a second Google employee who monitors the equipment from the passenger seat.

Goldwater argued before the State Assembly on April 7, saying that the, “autonomous technology would be safer than human drivers, offer more fuel-efficient cars and promote economic development.”

A Google spokesperson assured that the recent crash is not the car's fault. The driver had disabled the autopilot feature and was driving it manually.

"Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car," the company rep said.

Perhaps then, the argument that autonomous cars reduce human error holds some water after all?

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