A self-driving bus in Las Vegas has been involved in a minor car accident just two hours after it first started driving on the city streets.

Now while we would all undoubtedly love to place the blame on our new robotic companions it turns out that the blame doesn’t actually lie with who you might think.

The rather incident bust-up took place when the driver of a lorry inadvertently backed into the bus having not seen it in his rear-view mirror.

The bus, just minding its own business, stopped the moment it saw the truck but was sadly unable to avoid the rather considerable scraping it received.

Thankfully no-one was injured and the damage was light, however local news reports that the driver of the truck was cited with police confirming that the shuttle bus was not at fault in the incident.

The shuttle itself is made by French company Navyo and is the first self-driving shuttle bus to be introduced in the US.

Designed to carry up to 15 people at a time, the shuttle has a max speed of 45km/h and has been designed to be fully capable of driving on public roads.

It uses a range of LIDAR sensors around the car to create a 2D and 3D map of the world around it enabling it to see cars, pedestrians and cyclists.

 Using an advanced navigation system the shuttle will then travel down a pre-determined route but can still make changes depending on the cars around it and any unexpected changes to the environment.

Navyo are actually already testing automated vehicles in France and in the UK.

Its 50 shuttles have already transported almost 200,000 passengers since it first started across a range of public and private sites.