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Truck Driver at Fault in Minor Crash With Las Vegas Driverless Shuttle Bus

posted by FatPhil on Thursday November 09 2017, @04:44PM   
from the sorry,-bot,-I-didn't-see-you dept.

takyon writes:

On day one of its normal operations, a driverless shuttle bus in Las Vegas was involved in a minor crash [Luddites - content is there, but hidden by scripts/stylesheets - Ed.(FP)]. But neither the bus nor its human attendant were at fault:

A driverless shuttle bus was involved in a minor crash with a semi-truck less than two hours after it made its debut on Las Vegas streets Wednesday in front of cameras and celebrities. The human behind the wheel of the truck was at fault, police said. Las Vegas police officer Aden Ocampo-Gomez said the semi-truck's driver was cited for illegal backing. No injuries were reported.

"The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that it's (sic) sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident," the city said in a statement. "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."

The oval-shaped shuttle that can transport up to 12 people has an attendant and computer monitor, but no steering wheel and no brake pedals. It uses GPS, electronic curb sensors and other technology to make its way. It was developed by the French company Navya and was tested in January in Las Vegas.

At the unveiling ceremony, officials promoted it as the nation's first self-driving shuttle pilot project geared toward the public. Before it crashed, dozens of people had lined up to get a free trip on a 0.6-mile loop in downtown Las Vegas. City spokesman Jace Radke said the shuttle took two more loops after the crash.

Also at DW, TechCrunch, and ZDNet.

Previously: Self-Driving Shuttle Bus Tested in Las Vegas

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Original Submission

• Sign, sign, everywhere a sign... Sign, sign, everywhere a sign... (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday November 09 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)

  by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday November 09 2017, @11:42PM (#594919) Journal

  Did it signal it's presence? Did it try to signal it's presence? Would a reasonable person in the same circumstance have tried to signal it's presence? My guess "No, No, Yes." Which would mean the car bears some measure of liability. There is no stand your ground law for cars.

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• Re:Sign, sign, everywhere a sign... (Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Friday November 10 2017, @03:19AM

  by tftp (806) on Friday November 10 2017, @03:19AM (#595011) Homepage

  I suspect that if cars of such driving ability show up in the roads, there will be a surge of avoidable incidents just because the computer is too dumb to read the world correctly. One way to avoid that is to wait for a true AI. Another - to replace all cars with computers, at least on public roads. Driving is a highly collective, cooperative endeavor, but there will be an impaired link between humans and computers. Take that delivery truck, for example. A human knows that those trucks make deliveries, and on the back they often carry warnings. A human knows to stay away when trucks start maneuvering. Does the dumb computer know, for example, from what lane long trailers are making their turns? A dumb computer knows nothing of that and will cheerfully follow a truck at the minimum legal distance. I am concerned that the human driver is charged. Nothing would have happened if a human driver operated the shuttle. If in the future only humans will be charged for incidents caused by computers misreading the situation, there will be revolt.

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