Autonomous crash in first two hours

Two hours into its first public outing in Las Vegas, an autonomous vehicle was involved in a traffic accident.

The much-publicised Navya Arma autonomous shuttle bus was in a crash with a truck, caused by a human, The Guardian reports.

The minor accident happened when a reversing truck was detected by the shuttle which stopped in response. The truck continued to reverse illegally and impacted with the front of the eight-seater shuttle which had passengers aboard.

“The shuttle just stayed still. And we were like, it’s going to hit us, it’s going to hit us – And then it hit us,” passenger Jenny Wong told news station KSNV, “The shuttle didn’t have the ability to move back. The shuttle just stayed still.”

Private French company Keolis which owns Navya, replied to local news KSNV saying, “It’s designed to stop.. and yield to the moving object… But, if the moving object keeps coming toward the shuttle it can back up, but apparently in this case the truck just kept on going, and went right in to the side of the shuttle.”

The free shuttle service, the first of its kind in the US, will continue for its full year-long trial. A similar program is soon to commence with Michigan University using 15-seat Armas capable of 88km/h.

It was announced in September Navya would manufacture Arma shuttles in Adelaide in the not-too-distant future, joining Lyon in France and Michigan in Detroit.