Yeah and I think a larger problem is deer or other animals running into the road especially at night. I don't know if the Google car can handle that situation yet, but the sensors should be able to see animals way before humans can.
Many (most?) car/deer/moose collisions are unavoidable even for a human driver. In particular, because a human driver focuses on monitoring the road ahead, they cannot determine instantaneously whether it is optimal to continue straight and hit the animal or to swerve into oncoming traffic or the adjacent lane. The reflex reaction is to swerve which can often cause an even worse accident.
Humans also can't process the trade-off of hitting the animal vs. attempting to avoid it based on size fast enough whereas a self-driving car could conceivably be able to.
I would guess, too, that there are mitigation actions that can be taken by computers that humans don't have the reflexes to handle.
For example, I was always told in driving school as a kid that if you're about to hit a deer, you should let up on your brakes right before you hit them. This is so the bumper of the car comes back up and hits the deer center, as opposed to the bumper hitting the deer's bottom half, possibly bringing the deer up on to the hood/windshield where it could injure passengers.
I have no idea whether that's actually true or not, but a self-driving car could easily handle something like that, or automatically turn a car to take the impact of the deer on the side of the car without passengers, whatever the best course of action is.
