https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/former-google-self-driving-car-engineer-says-safety-not-the-priority.html

A new report in The New Yorker details the events leading up to Waymo's 2017 high-profile lawsuit alleging Uber stole its trade secrets for creating self-driving vehicles. But in the runup to that legal battle, Google's lax approach to vehicle safety as it developed its self-driving technology stands out.

According to the report, Google had multiple accidents involving self-driving cars prior to the installment of California state regulations in 2014 that require companies to report such incidents. Unnamed Google executives told The New Yorker that over a dozen accidents occurred in the early years of Google's self-driving car project, which was called Project Chauffeur at the time. Project Chauffeur is now an independent company called Waymo under Google's parent company, Alphabet.