SAN FRANCISCO—Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he sees little reason to release the accident reports involving the Internet company’s self-driving cars because he believes there’s nothing new in documents withheld to protect the privacy of other motorists.
Brin, who oversees Google’s fleet of self-driving cars, outlined his rationale Wednesday during a sometimes-testy exchange with a longtime critic at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Mountain View, California.
As part of his effort to show Google has nothing to hide, Brin disclosed that one of the company’s self-driving cars was rear-ended at a traffic signal during the past week. With that collision, Google’s self-driving cars have now been involved in 12 accidents while covering more than 1.7 million miles over the past six years, according to the company.
