This is Google's first self-driving car crash

This is Google's first self-driving car crash This photo of what looks like a minor case of Prius-on-Prius vehicular violence may actually be a piece of automotive history: the first accident caused by Google's self-driving car. Who's name should the cop write down on the ticket?

Sent in by a Jalopnik tipster, the photos were snapped earlier this week near Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The Prius — recognizable as a Google self-driving prototype from the roof equipment that's smaller than a typical Google Streetview image collector — appears to have rear-ended another Prius.

This is precisely why we're worried about self-driving cars. Perhaps the complicated set of lasers and imaging systems that Google chief autonomous car researcher Sebastian Thrum called "the perfect driving mechanism" thought it was just looking at its shadow.

This is Google's first self-driving car crash Earlier this year, Google convinced the state legislature of Nevada to create a special license allowing self-driving cars on the state's freeways, and its been racking up hundreds of thousands of miles in California, where there's no law banning them.

Yet Google has never answered the question of who's ultimately responsible for any accidents that happen while the software controls the vehicle. There's a driver in all of Google's tests who can take control, and probably gets the ticket in this case — but Google imagines these vehicles spreading far beyond its corporate campus.

Already some of the more forward-thinking technologists have questioned whether autonomous vehicles should be smart enough to sacrifice its own passengers to save other people in an imminent crash. Aside from promising the worst of a "Blade Runner" future, such thought experiments illustrate why self-driving cars will require such a huge conceptual hurdle to catch on in the United States.

Google can't be wishing to have its software take a portion of the legal responsibility for traffic crashes that cost more than $160 billion a year in the United States. Yet if the operator of a Google self-driving car is always responsible for any crash, than simply turning the system on would be seen in court as a sign they weren't paying attention.

The biggest battle in auto safety today involves keeping drivers focused on driving. To me, Google's self-driving car seems like the ultimate distracted driving machine.

Hat tip to El Phreak!