Google reports self-driving car mistakes: 272 failures and 13 near misses

California regulators require self-driving car firms to report when humans had to take over from robot drivers for safety, though Google is giving only select data

Google's self-driving cars might not yet have caused a single accident on public roads, but it's not for want of trying.

Between September 2014 and November 2015, Google's autonomous vehicles in California experienced 272 failures and would have crashed at least 13 times if their human test drivers had not intervened, according to a document filed by Google with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).