A nuTonomy self-driving car hit a truck in Singapore on Tuesday as it tried to change lanes, Reuters reports. Nobody was injured in the accident.
This is the first self-driving car accident in Singapore.
nuTonomy says its self-driving car was driving slowly at the time of the incident. And, as required by Singpaore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA), two nuTonomy engineers were inside the car in case any human intervention was needed.
In a Facebook post, Singapore’s Land Transport Authority says it’s still investigating the accident.
However, Michael Chong Kwan Chew uploaded a picture of the accident scene to a Facebook group called “Singapore Taxi Driver” and gave his account of the incident. He says the self-driving car ate into the truck’s lane, and that the side of the truck was dented and the right bumper of the nuTonomy driverless car was damaged.
Four groups are currently testing self-driving cars in western Singapore. And the test routes just last month were doubled to 7.4 miles. nuTonomy in August 2016 launched, in Singapore, the first self-driving taxi service in the world. nuTonomy is testing six self-driving cars, including Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric cars.
People can summon a nuTonomy self-driving taxi from their phone. nuTonomy has said it plans to add more self-driving taxis to the fleet in the next two years.
This isn’t the first self-driving car accident, of course. While driving in autonomous mode, a Google self-driving car struck a public bus in California on Valentine’s Day 2016. The Google self-driving car was trying to get around some sandbags on a street when its left front hit the bus’ right side. Nobody was injured. You can watch surveillance video of the accident below.
And Tesla Autopilot, a semi-autonomous driving system, has been involved in numerous accidents, two of which were fatal. In January 2016, 23-year-old Gao Yaning was killed in China when his Tesla, while on Autopilot, collided with the back of a road sweeper vehicle. The accident was caught on his dashboard camera, but Tesla said the car suffered so much damage that it couldn’t transmit data to “incapable of transmitting log data to our servers.” Here’s a Chinese news program discussing this incident.
On May 7, 2016 in Williston, Fla., 40-year-old Joshua Brown was killed when his Tesla, while on Autopilot, failed to apply the brakes as a tractor-trailer was making a left turn in front of the car. It turned out that Autopilot was never designed to handle the scenario that led to this fatal crash. Tesla and Mobileye, which initially collaborated on Autopilot, ended their relationship after this fatal crash.
