Rumors swirled around the web last week that a Google Street View car, one of the vehicles used by Google to take 360-degree panoramic shots of different locations for the Google Maps service, had been involved in an accident. A reported published by BBC News on Friday confirmed that story and added new details into the mix. Needless to say, the incident sounds like a public relations nightmare for Google.

According to the BBC article, the accident took place in Bogor, Indonesia, where the Google Street View car collided with three vehicles in total – two public transportation buses and an unspecified resident truck. Police reports indicate that the Google driver hit the first bus, panicked at the angry looks from the bus driver, and tried to drive away. The attempted hit and run failed when the Google Street View car, instead of finding an opening for escape, collided with a second public transportation bus and a truck.

Details about the accident are still relatively sparse. The driver’s name or identifying information, for one, have been left out of the story thus far, while the BBC could not confirm or deny whether anyone was injured in the incident. Google has merely confirmed that something did happen, though the company’s statements have been little more than than textbook public relations lines.

“We take incidents like this very seriously,” said Vishnu Mahmud, Google’s head of communications in Indonesia. “We’re working closely with local authorities to address the situation.”

This isn’t the first controversy to surround a Google Street View car in Indonesia this year. Since Google arrived in the country last fall (November, to be exact) in order to collect information for the improvement of Google Maps, Street View car drives have come under at least one under allegation of reckless driving.

Earlier this year, a Google Street View car driver was accused of hitting a donkey in Botswana. A series of photos from the Street View car seemed to indicate that the donkey in question was walking healthily on the side of the road in one shot and then, in the next, lying on its side as the car drove away. Kei Kewai, a Group Product Manager for Google Maps, explained the donkey incident as a misunderstanding.

“Because of the way our 360-degree imagery is put together, it looked to some that our car had been involved in an unseemly hit-and-run, leaving the humble beast stranded in the road,” Kei Kewai stated after the incident. He went on to argue that the shot of the donkey lying on the side of the road had actually been taking prior to the other photograph, that the donkey was probably just enjoying a dust bath, and that the beast was alive and well.

Whether Kewai’s donkey story is true remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: Google won’t have as much ease in explaining away the four-vehicle accident caused by the Street View car in Bogor.