A self-driving shuttle bus has been reportedly involved in a crash on its first day at work, the BBC reported.
Technology finds a way to add something new to every facet of life, to boost productivity and make life easier. Transportation isn’t left out of the scene. The concept of self-driving cars has been around for a couple of years and is finally a reality. The idea is to create a future where people can relax totally while a car does the work without any sort of fright. However, even though the programmers tell us there are no cons in this innovation, it is a machine; so, the possibility of an unexpected glitch cannot be totally ruled out, much less when there are human drivers on the same road.
The shuttle is the first to be used to convey passengers in the United States. The self-driving vehicle was driving at a low speed-maximum speed of 45km/h (as it was designed to function) and had several passengers. It was involved in a collision with a lorry driven by a human being.
The sophisticated machine is designed to make several calculations per second, in order to avoid accidents of any sort. So far, crashes have been attributed to humans driving. City officials, therefore, blamed the driver of the lorry and handed him a ticket. Nobody sustained an injury.
Google’s self-driving car was involved in a crash last year
A spokesman, who witnessed the collision in Les Vegas said the incidence was a minor collision and that the shuttle will likely be back on the road after a routine check has been carried out to ensure everything is intact.
Jace Radke, a public officer who blamed the crash on the human element said:
‘A delivery truck was coming out of an alley. The shuttle did what it was supposed to do and stopped. Unfortunately, the human element, the driver of the truck, didn’t stop.’
It is not surprising that this incident occurred. Prior to this crash, there had been records of self-driving cars involved in crashes where the human drivers are always at fault. The programmers claim that the technology has almost no errors as they are designed to detect the speed of another moving car and the distance between them and other objects. However, crashes persist. This could mean that self-driving cars may not survive with human elements on the same road.
Nevertheless, experts insist that despite its flaws, self-driving cars should not be totally rolled out. They maintain a position that self–driving cars will ‘significantly make the roads safer’.
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