Various auto and tech players have actively been making efforts towards bringing self-driving vehicles on the roads. While semi-autonomous levels of driving have been achieved by many, nobody has perfected the feat as of now. And in the pursuit of that perfection, many setbacks have been experienced as well.
A recent report by Tech.co compiles these setbacks, which basically are the crashes that these autonomous cars have met with during testing. As can be expected, or not, all the major players of autonomous tech have their names on the list, including Google¡¯s Waymo, GM¡¯s Cruise and even Apple.
Since these players are based in California, the place has since long been a testing hub for autonomous technology. To keep this under check, California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) mandates the companies to report every accident, major or minor, involving autonomous vehicles. Tech.co went through this list and came up with an astonishing figure.
Reuters
In total, autonomous cars have been involved in close to a 100 crashes to date. Most of these constituted of Cruise and Waymo cars, both counting to 51 and 37 crashes respectively.
Interestingly enough, the driverless cars mostly experienced these crashes in specific regions of the state. Cruise, for instance, saw its cars meeting with accidents three times within an area of 65 yards at Division Street. Waymo had a similar experience at another location. The six-lane El Camino Real in the middle of Mountain View saw nine Waymo crashes in total. ?
Even Apple recently joined the list, with two incidents occurring after August 28.
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Map displaying the site of all the autonomous vehicle crashes (Tech.Co)
The Reason
Autonomous cars are designed to avoid collisions at all cost, with an extra caution for pedestrians and cyclists. After all, the prime reason for achieving complete autonomy is to boost safety on the road, by removing the chances of error while driving, which is next-to-impossible in the case of a human.
This, however, brings its own set of challenges for the developers. In the report, several users have mentioned the autonomous cars to be ¡®extra cautious¡¯, kind of like a nervous learner driver.
Now on an empty stretch, this isn¡¯t a challenge. But when such cars have to interact with those being driven by impatient humans, it results in a mess. That is also reflected by the results, as most of the said crashes have taken place at speeds lower than 16 km/h as per the report and at intersections and junctions.
One cyclist even mentions, ¡°it [autonomous car] moves a foot forward, then stops again, so I go. Then it starts to drive again.¡± The statement reveals how the autonomous tech prevents the car from moving at intersections, where human drivers are to act as per the situation. In essence, the real tough job for autonomous tech is to take the initiative.
That is the major reason why autonomous cars can almost never work in India, i.e. under the present conditions on the road. As self-driving vehicles are programmed to keep a lookout and then proceed if the path is clear and the signal is green, the swarm of two and three-wheelers on the roads of Indian cities will never let the self-driving car move, especially in a bumper-to-bumper traffic.