Although Google cars have been involved in accidents before, the company has always said its self-driving technology was not to blame.

In a report filed with California regulators, Google said the crash took place in Mountain View on February 14 when a self-driving Lexus RX450h tried to skirt around some sandbags in a wide lane.

Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour.

The vehicle and the test driver "believed the bus would slow or allow the Google (autonomous vehicle) to continue," it said.

But three seconds later, as the Google car in autonomous mode re-entered the centre of the lane, it struck the side of the bus, causing damage to its left front bomper, front wheel and a driver side sensor. No-one was injured in the car or on the bus.

Google said in a statement on Monday that "we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't moved, there wouldn't have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that."

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority will investigate the circumstances of the accident, Stacey Hendler Ross, spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, said on Monday.

She said the Google car caused minor damage to the bus, striking the "pivoting joint," or flexible area in the middle of the articulated bus. After the crash, 15 passengers on the bus were transferred to another bus.

An investigation to determine liability is pending, she said.

• Google's driverless cars have needed hundreds of human interventions to stop accidents

John Simpson, privacy project director for advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, said the crash "is more proof that robot car technology is not ready for auto pilot".

A spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles said on Monday it will speak to Google to gather additional information, but added "the DMV is not responsible for determining fault".

 

'Phone company Three said I couldn't return faulty phone - because I hadn't kept the box'

You can't always rely on shop staff to know your consumer rights. One mobile phone customer who has experienced this first hand is Christabel McCooey, a trainee barrister from London.

Last week she tried - and failed - to return a defective Nokia phone at a Three store in a large station.

Just three weeks after purchasing the phone, its speaker had stopped working. Ms McCooey returned to the store armed with her receipt, charger and the handset itself. But she didn't have the box it came in.

· Exposed: How Vodafone is messing up customers' bills

She was flabbergasted when the manager of the store made a call to a senior colleague and confirmed it was "not Three's company policy" to accept any return without a box, even where the phone is faulty.

"Surely, my legal right to a refund or exchange isn't trumped by a lack of packaging?" she asked.

"If failure to keep the box sweeps out any right to a return, shouldn't that be made clear at the point of sale? The box would be more important than a receipt."

· 'Pregnant, no phone signal, and O2 won't end my contract'

 

She said: "It was an extremely frustrating experience. Companies like this rely on the powerlessness of customers to enable them to supply defective goods with impunity and little care for individual feedback or complaint.

"The firm's employees themselves feel no responsibility, because, as they rightly say, 'it's store policy' and therefore nothing they personally can do to defy it."

A spokesman from Three admitted its staff had made a mistake and blamed a "training error". He said: “We apologise to Mrs McCooey for her experience when returning a faulty device. We’re in touch with her directly to make sure the issue is fully resolved.”

What does the law say?

There’s no provision in the rules for companies to require people to return faulty goods in their original packaging. It’s quite normal for a customer to dispose of the packaging after they’ve bought something.

If a company tries to reject your complaint on those grounds, you should challenge them. If they won’t listen, threaten to take them to the Ombudsman - or even the courts.

The Consumer Rights Act makes it very clear that anything that anyone sells to you must be “fit for purpose” and of a “satisfactory quality”.

If you discover that something you bought is faulty, then the company that sold it to you must offer to repair or replace it if the fault comes to light in the first six months.

James Daley, director at Fairer Finance, a consumer group, said: "Retailers will often try and fob customers off - suggesting that the fault was caused by their own carelessness. But during the first six months after you’ve bought something, the onus is on the seller to prove that the fault was not present when the item was sold.

"Beyond six months, you may still be within your rights to get the seller to repair or replace the item, but the burden of proof switches to the customer to show that the fault was present when they bought the product."

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