If you believe every news-blog out there, in the short term, we can expect to see autonomous vehicles stepping into daily life any minute now. It’s gotten so pervasive that even Bob Lutz himself has penned an editorial on how the self-driving car can and will replace the automobile as we know it. We aren’t talking Tesla’s Autopilot level of autonomous…we’re talking no driver, no wheel, nearly no control kind of autonomous, the type that we aren’t exactly fans of. And apparently Las Vegas was going to be the testbed for the first showing of this kind of service, with a fully-autonomous shuttle bus working a small loop between Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard courtesy of French transport company Keolis and the builders of the shuttle, a French startup called Navya. The vehicle seats eight passengers, including a “safety driver” (yeah, we know, not 100% fully autonomous, but is required for legal reasons) for the time being as part of a two-week experiment on whether or not the service works.
One day. That’s all it took for the autonomous shuttle to meet another road-going vehicle in traffic. According to the Las Vegas city government Tumblr page (!), “The autonomous shuttle was testing today when it was grazed by a delivery truck downtown. The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that it’s sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident. Unfortunately the delivery truck did not stop and grazed the front fender of the shuttle. Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has the accident would have been avoided. Testing of the shuttle will continue during the 12-month pilot in the downtown Innovation District. The shuttle will remain out of service for the rest of the day. The driver of the truck was cited by Metro.”
Just want to point something out here. We’re ok that the driver of the truck got cited for the incident. It seems that the truck driver was at fault for the collision. But note the wordplay used: “Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has, the accident would have been avoided.” What we hear: “Autonomous vehicle worked great. Human-operated vehicle was the danger here. Maybe time for autonomous trucks, too?”
I’d rather chop my legs off than get into any autonomous vehicle. Just my luck when some North Korean hacker decides to make it go full speed into a tree or steer into on coming traffic….
You’re somehow surprised that the mainstream media bends the story to suit their narrative???
Yeah , that’s going to work just fine . What could possibly go wrong ?
“Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has, the accident would have been avoided.” Hmmmm…Sounds a lot like “guns kill people”
We simply don’t need this on our roads. Is it so millennials never have to look away from their phone?
Sounds like a call for more trucking regulation and heavier handed government. No thanks.
Imagine these stupid things on icy snow covered roads? It is only as smart as third world driver who probably programmed it. Too stupid to get out of the way for a reversing truck.
This accident needs to be investigated further, for realsies. Here is what happened: The truck was in the process of backing up and here comes the shuttle and it stops. But it stops unsafely too close to the truck as the backing up truck’s wheels are turned to maneuver the trailer into the loading area. A “real” driver would have stopped well short of the backing up truck, allowing the truck driver to back in to the loading dock. It is the shuttles fault.
The autonomous vehicle did not even attempt to AVOID the collision ,a human would have at least attempted to AVOID being hit. The real world,and the real driving world is not yes/no. Our world is yes/no/maybe. The AV acted in a way to not cause a collision but did not react to prevent one.
Needs an LS swap.
Don’t buy into this automonous bullshit. Another thing to take our freedom away. F’ that.
What everyone else has said. I want nothing to do with them. Bad idea and yes I think more big brother crap we don’t need.
If a real driver had been driving the bus, he would have known to back up to give the truck room to maneuver. I’ve done that before. Trucks need room to maneuver.