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A self-driving car designed by Google has been involved in a minor collision with a public bus in California, US.

The firm has assumed partial responsibility for the collision that occurred on 14 February.

Following the incident, Google has made changes in its vehicle software in order to avoid such collisions in future.

The tech company submitted a report to regulatory authorities of California in which it stated that the collision took place in Mountain View as its Lexus RX450h autonomous vehicle attempted to avoid some sandbags in a lane.

The company claimed that the driverless vehicle was moving at less than 2mph when it hit the bus, which was travelling at about 15mph.

"We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision."

Google’s autonomous vehicles have been in several collisions; however, in many cases, the cars were rear-ended.

The car struck the ‘pivoting joint’ of the bus. Following the crash, 15 passengers on the bus were shifted to another bus.

The collision caused no injuries to anyone in the bus or car.

The Telegraph quoted a company statement, saying: "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 intends to probe into circumstances that led to the accident and to determine liability.

Image: Google’s autonomous vehicle Lexus RX450h. Photo: courtesy of Steve Jurvetson via Wikipedia