With a number of internet based companies entering the Self-Driving car industry, Apple’s trial is a good point. The company’s first self-driving car crash isn’t their fault as thought. The AI system powering the cars are carefully smart and therefore have a different driving approaches as opposed to human.
The Lexus RX450h SUV which was equipped with the Apple’s sensors and hardware traveled in less than 1MPH when it was suddenly rear-ended by another car, a Nissan Leaf traveling at 15MPH and driven by a human.
Though nobody was hurt during the accident and both cars had just minor damages. The accident occur at about 3:00PM on Monday in Sunnyvale California.
The accident happened when the Apple’s vehicle was attempting to merge onto the congested Lawrence Expressway, South from Kifer Road. The weather condition as of then was sunny which makes it ideal for driving.
While the human driver is being blamed for the accident, AIs too might have their own version of the blame for being too extra careful.
For example, the Google’s Waymo is usually prone to having this type of problems with human drivers which means being rear-ended while merging is like a normal problem for the cars.
Experts thought that self-driving cars are made to be way more careful unlike human drivers so the differences might be conflicting on the driveway sometimes. But as the technology get older, it’s expected to be more human-like in driving and the ability to take good decisions while driving will make it a good point.
The Apple’s Lexus is one among their other 66 self-driving vehicles and it forms a part in their long rumored Project Titan. Although very secretive, the project is assumed to be of Apple’s intentions to enter into self-driving car industry or just an add-on pack that standard manufacturers can add on to their car lineups.
The secretive state of the project makes success metric nearly untrackable but it’s confirmed that Apple had a partnership with Volkswagen to transform the Volkswagen T6 vans to a self-driving shuttle for Apple employees at their spaceship-like Cupertino campus. While they expect the completion of the poject by the end of the year, it’s rumored to be extended till the next year 2019 with a backup human driver at the front-seat in case.