After the accident involving nuTonomy’s driverless car came into the light, the startup has ceased its self-driving trials until investigation is complete.
The incident that took place on Tuesday witnessed one of the robo-taxi colliding with a lorry while changing lanes. nuTonomy issued a statement saying that the self-driving car was conducting on-road testing and there were no injuries involved. It had two engineers onboard withone of them behind the wheel as a safety driver, and the vehicle was traveling at a low speed.
The company has been cooperating with the investigation by the Singapore Police and Land Transport Authority (LTA). Additionally, it is inspecting the exact cause of the incident too. Co-founder Emilio Frazzoli during a panel discussion, yesterday, at Singapore International Transport Congress and Exhibition said,
We released all the data logs and initial report to the authorities and conducted our own investigations. The good thing is that nobody was injured – the cars were a little bit dented on the side but – I’m not happy to say this – but this is something that I have to face in this program.
Meanwhile, the three agencies namely A*Star, Delphi and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Smart) are continuing with their respective ongoing driverless cars’ trials.
nuTonomy is one of two firms selected by the LTA to test self-driving cars in the nation. It had been testing its fleet of vehicles in the one-north district since August, and is planning a commercial launch in 2018. It recently collaborated with Southeast Asian ride-hailing service Grab and is reportedly in conversation with potential investors to raise fresh funds by the first-half of next year.
Singapore has been facilitating the invention and testing of autonomous technology. Earlier this week, Nanyang Technological University partnered with LTA to hold trials of self-driving buses soon.
