Self-driving bus involved in accident on its first day (vehicle, unlimited, lane)

[Pruzhany]

A driverless shuttle bus was in an accident on the first day the electric vehicle was being tested in Las Vegas.


Self-driving bus gets into accident on its first day in Las Vegas - NY Daily News

[don1945]

The day I get a self driving vehicle, just put me on life support or shoot me to put me out of my misery.

[charlygal]

Funny how they blamed the human driver. They keep blaming people. I say let them out there without a human and lets see those results.

[robr2]

Originally Posted by charlygal

Funny how they blamed the human driver. They keep blaming people. I say let them out there without a human and lets see those results.

Because the driver was at fault. The bus stopped when it sensed the truck. The truck then backed into the bus.

[southernnaturelover]

Why would they design the bus without the ability to back up? Stupid.

[Stonepa]

Originally Posted by charlygal

Funny how they blamed the human driver. They keep blaming people. I say let them out there without a human and lets see those results.

We test autonomous vehicles all the time at one of the companies I work with. For the last 2 years, and many tens of thousands of miles of on-the-road tests, it is always the human drivers that result in accidents. If your replaced the empty seat with a human driver the accidents would have still occurred, but at a much higher rate.

[Hollywood]

Misleading title. The autonomous vehicle was stopped and got ran into by a human driven vehicle.

And in case you've never ventured onto the streets before, human beings are absolutely horrible drivers.

[Ed_RDNC]

The advent of semi and fully-autonomous vehicles (FAV) have required us to consider various operating policies that will eventually be set by public laws. Here's a new one:

Since FAVs are predicted to be so much safer than a human-directed vehicle, and therefore much less likely to be the one at-fault for an accident with a non-FAV, then there are two options:

Design the FAV to be able actively 'escape' the accident. Make it's software and hardware able to identify and dodge and evade potential accidents that would be caused by human drivers. OR:

Let them passively accept the damage, like what happened to the bus above. But also provide dash-cams that record everything, and then get reimbursed for the damages, (to the FAV and it's passengers). This latter scenario would be easier, simpler, and much cheaper to do.

This second one would have many more accidents (and human injuries and causalities), but would much easier to implement. So it's a social question, not technical.

[cdelena]

Some of the issues for automated pilots is adapting to the environment and it often takes human intuition.

How many times have you used the horn to warn someone off, dodged a driver, read someone's face and adjusted, saw wandering and anticipated a lane change or turn, ignored lane lines to get around a bad situation, challenged a stream of drivers to get a position in a non metered situation, hurried or slowed to get out of a bad clump of traffic, etc. etc.

Even if autonomous vehicles take off there will be decades of human drivers and the need to deal with an unlimited number of unanticipated variations.

[Cape Cod Todd]

The thing is self driving vehicles are following the rules of the road and problems will occur when a human does something that is unexpected like swerving into a lane or backing out without looking.

We have all seen accidents and most are caused by someone that was not paying attention. Our defensive driving skills may allow us to avoid some drunk driver from crashing into us but the sensors on an autonomous vehicle may not be up to the challenge just yet.