when you cut out half the article, it makes your post seem a lot harsher than it is....ie:

"The study's authors, Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak, concluded: 'We currently cannot rule out, with a reasonable level of confidence, the possibility that the actual rate for self-driving vehicles is lower than for conventional vehicles.' "

"In all but three of the accidents, Brian Torcellini said the cars had been rear-ended by people too busy checking their phones and not paying attention to the road ahead."

"Two of these accidents were said to be in the early days of the project, when the technology was still in its infancy, while the third was caused by an employee who was steering a robot car while running a personal errand." -> so one of these accidents was caused by a person DRIVING the car, not the self driving car at all

so yeah....out of googles 16 accidents with 48 cars in 7 years, 14 have been them getting hit by other people (typically distracted drivers), one hit something while being driven by a person, and there was one legitimate accident (the bus the car scraped and caused essentially no damage)