collaborated with the 2021 Tokyo Olympics by designing special self-driving vehicles for athletes to use. Shockingly, Toyota had to suspend its self-driving vehicles when one of them collided with a Paralympic athlete. What was behind this crazy news story?
Toyota self-driving vehicle hits Paralympic athlete, or does it?
to have collided with a Paralympic athlete at the Tokyo Olympic Village.
Toyota quickly suspended the use of these special transportation buses. Both the company and police looked into the incident to see what exactly happened.
However, during the investigation, it was found that the vehicle was actually manually operated by a driver when the crash happened.
Aramitsu Kitazono, a visually impaired Paralympic judoka (expert in judo), was crossing a crosswalk when the vehicle made a right turn and hit him.
The operator told the Japanese police that while turning, they knew that someone was crossing the street, but had assumed that the pedestrian would stop when they saw the bus turning around the corner. After all, the bus was going at extremely slow speeds.
The accident hurt the athlete’s head and legs. He had to withdraw from the Paralympics due to his injuries. Obviously, this is a heartbreaking incident for Kitazono and his fans.
Toyota’s CEO has since apologized for the incident and declared that perhaps autonomous vehicles are not ready for the streets.
noted that this was claimed to be the first ever autonomous car-related accident in Japan, which makes sense why it created such a stir and why Toyota was so quick to apologize.
Kitazono, being visually impaired, was obviously less likely to know a vehicle was making a turn.
The real problem in this case, therefore, appears to be an assumption made by the e-Palette operator due to a lack of awareness of disabilities.
Would a truly self-driving car have analyzed the situation and known that Kitazono was not going to stop, and have halted before it hit the athlete?
We can’t know for sure.
It’s fairly common for autonomous cars to spark controversy, especially when a car crash is involved. The field is still growing, both in terms of technology and regulations.
Of course, sometimes these are legitimate safety concerns and the crash is caused by an autonomous driving function of some sort. Sometimes, there are other reasons for the crash.
Perhaps one day, we’ll see autonomous cars everywhere on the streets. A lot of industry experts expect them to dominate the car world in a decade or two.
Until then, we will probably see a lot more car accidents that leave the impression autonomous cars are more dangerous than regular ones.
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