-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Self driving shuttle crashes hours after Las Vegas unveiling
- Thread starter ElectricTundra
- Start date
-
- Tags
- Autonomous Vehicles
alwaysru
Member
Truck driver ran into the stopped shuttle. Thankfully human error - not theirs!
There doesn't appear to be much damage so it was either going very slow, likely, or had seen the truck pull in front of it and was slowing down, also likely. I'd love to see video to know exactly what happened and if the truck pulled out in front of it in a way that made it impossible to stop in time.
The problem with that self-driving shuttle is that it wasn’t programmed to lay on the horn and extend a middle finger while screaming you stupid MF!
In all seriousness, I think this is a very real design flaw with this (and possibly most) autonomous vehicles.
Many trucks are designed so that the drivers just can't see the area behind the truck well. In many situations, trucks essentially back up very slowly, and depend on the car (if any) behind the truck to honk at them (and then back up) if there is going to be a collision. This is one reason why trucks (and not cars) emit a loud beep when they back up.
It doesn't sound like the automated shuttle was programed to behave the way a human driver does when a truck slowly backs up towards their car. A human would honk, causing the truck driver to stop (and therefore not have a collision). The shuttle just braked, and may well have braked much closer to the truck than a human driver normally would (we don't know this).
Although this is a case where the truck driver was at fault from a legal perspective, it seems fairly likely that this is a collision that would not have occurred if there was a human driving the shuttle.
This type of problem is likely to recur as long as manufacturers put half-assed autonomous systems on the road (ie systems that can't be trusted to go faster than a 35 MPH or that can only operate on specific roads that have been fully modeled and mapped).
Tam
Well-Known Member
Yes, it's the human truck's driver fault who was ticketed.
Yes, the autonomous van did what it was programmed to do: complete paralysis with a very slowly moving truck backing up toward it and hit it in slow motion.
However, any low tech car with human driver would most likely be able to avoid being hit in this scenario.
1) A simple horn in this scenario would stop the slow moving truck from blindly backing up toward the autonomous van.
2) Instead of becoming completely frozen, autonomous van could have attempted some evasive maneuvers such as speeding up forward or reversing backward to pass or avoid the slowly backing up truck.
Being a frozen sitting duck target without an option for response to the threat is not a very comforting thought.
From the Wired article;
Forget Cars, Self-Driving Shuttles Are Be the Future of Transportation
(The shuttle could have honked, a Keolis representative said, but didn’t because the truck’s trailer moved in a way that the autonomous system did not anticipate.)
Totally not reassuring!
Also did anyone else notice that it turned right as a person entered the crosswalk; not sure of NV law, but that's a ticket in CA.
Forget Cars, Self-Driving Shuttles Are Be the Future of Transportation
(The shuttle could have honked, a Keolis representative said, but didn’t because the truck’s trailer moved in a way that the autonomous system did not anticipate.)
Totally not reassuring!
Also did anyone else notice that it turned right as a person entered the crosswalk; not sure of NV law, but that's a ticket in CA.
Tam
Well-Known Member
May be I missed, but this autonomous shuttle doesn't seem to claim itself as beta.
If it wants to take over the job of a human public bus driver, it should have some basic skills (like sounding horn...) to protect its 12 occupants:
"Reporter Jeff Zurschmeide, who was on the shuttle at the time of the crash, said the self-driving vehicle did what it was programmed to do but not everything a human driver might do.
“That’s a critical point,” Zurschmeide wrote on digitaltrends.com. “We had about 20 feet of empty street behind us (I looked), and most human drivers would have thrown the car into reverse and used some of that space to get away from the truck. Or at least leaned on the horn and made our presence harder to miss.”"
U.S. safety board to probe self-driving shuttle crash in Las Vegas
If it wants to take over the job of a human public bus driver, it should have some basic skills (like sounding horn...) to protect its 12 occupants:
"Reporter Jeff Zurschmeide, who was on the shuttle at the time of the crash, said the self-driving vehicle did what it was programmed to do but not everything a human driver might do.
“That’s a critical point,” Zurschmeide wrote on digitaltrends.com. “We had about 20 feet of empty street behind us (I looked), and most human drivers would have thrown the car into reverse and used some of that space to get away from the truck. Or at least leaned on the horn and made our presence harder to miss.”"
U.S. safety board to probe self-driving shuttle crash in Las Vegas
Last edited:
Similar threads
