A self-driving Navya Arma bus shuttle in Paris. A similar vehicle was involved in a minor accident with a delivery truck in Las Vegas last week. Jacques Demarthon / AFP
A self-driving Navya Arma bus shuttle in Paris. A similar vehicle was involved in a minor accident with a delivery truck in Las Vegas last week. Jacques Demarthon / AFP
A self-driving Navya Arma bus shuttle in Paris. A similar vehicle was involved in a minor accident with a delivery truck in Las Vegas last week. Jacques Demarthon / AFP
A self-driving Navya Arma bus shuttle in Paris. A similar vehicle was involved in a minor accident with a delivery truck in Las Vegas last week. Jacques Demarthon / AFP

Las Vegas accident raises questions about driverless vehicles


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It only took a few hours for the first self-driving taxi shuttling people around Las Vegas to collide with a vehicle being driven by a human doing something it didn’t expect.

The driverless passenger van was on its first day Wednesday of offering free rides to people along a half-mile loop in Las Vegas, part of a pilot programme to study the technology. It was dinged by a tractor-trailer as the truck attempted to back into an alley to make a delivery.

No one was hurt and the damage was minimal but the US National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to investigate what’s sure to be a growing concern among motorists and authorities: the interaction of self-driving vehicles with their human counterparts.

"This is exactly the kind of real-world scenario that this pilot is attempting to learn from," said John Moreno, a spokesman for AAA, formerly the American Automobile Association, which is sponsoring the self-driving shuttle in Las Vegas. "This is one of the most advanced pieces of technology on the planet, and it’s just now learning how to interact with humans and human driving."

In this case, the pod-like Navya SAS shuttle had been behind the truck, which stopped, shifted into reverse and began backing up slowly to turn into the alley.

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Police were called to the scene and the truck driver was issued a ticket, Moreno said.

The shuttle is manufactured by Navya and operated by transportation services company Keolis, both based in France, as part of AAA’s pilot programme to offer rides to the public in the city, expose riders to autonomous technology and study how the shuttle performs in real-world scenarios.

With another vehicle behind the Navya shuttle, it froze in place as the truck backed up, Moreno said. The Navya vehicle, which organisers lightheartedly patched with band-aids, has a human operator on board who can take control of the vehicle, but "it just happened too quickly," he said.

While the truck driver was cited, the incident shows how autonomous cars can struggle to anticipate the non-verbal communication that goes on between human drivers on the road every day, said Duke University robotics professor Missy Cummings.

"He probably had an expectation that the shuttle would back off and allow him to do his thing," Cummings said. "Obviously that doesn’t work. There wasn’t the logic inside this little shuttle to anticipate this."

Digitaltrends.com reporter Jeff Zurschmeide was on board the van during the incident and described it in a Thursday web post.

"We had about 20 feet of empty street behind us (I looked) and most human drivers would have thrown the car into reverse and used some of that space to get away from the truck," Zurschmeide wrote. "Or at least leaned on the horn and made our presence harder to miss. The shuttle didn’t have those responses in its programme."

The NTSB has sent a team of four investigators to examine the accident, which spokesman Chris O’Neil said is the agency’s first probe of a collision involving a driverless car.

The dispatch signals the NTSB’s growing interest in the rapidly expanding use of automated systems in motor vehicles. In September, the NTSB issued a report critical of Tesla’s semi-autonomous systems that allowed a driver in Florida to go for extended periods without putting his hands on the steering wheel. The Tesla Model S, which was steering itself, slammed into the side of a truck in Florida in 2016, killing the driver.

While citing the actions of the two drivers as the primary cause, the safety board ruled that Tesla’s Autopilot design also contributed to the accident. Even though the car could be used for extended periods without human intervention, it was not designed to stop if a truck was crossing in front of it, the agency’s report concluded.

The safety agency also recommended that vehicle manufacturers and federal regulators take steps to ensure that more advanced automation isn’t used in situations it’s not designed for.

The NTSB in recent years has focused on the potential safety benefits and risks posed by automation in a variety of transportation modes, from aviation to railroads. It has aggressively pushed the automobile industry to install safety protections, such as auto-braking and lane-departure systems. At the same time, it has warned that drivers need to be trained how to use these devices so they don’t create new safety risks.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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HAJJAN
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Company profile

Date started: December 24, 2018

Founders: Omer Gurel, chief executive and co-founder and Edebali Sener, co-founder and chief technology officer

Based: Dubai Media City

Number of employees: 42 (34 in Dubai and a tech team of eight in Ankara, Turkey)

Sector: ConsumerTech and FinTech

Cashflow: Almost $1 million a year

Funding: Series A funding of $2.5m with Series B plans for May 2020

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Global Fungi Facts

• Scientists estimate there could be as many as 3 million fungal species globally
• Only about 160,000 have been officially described leaving around 90% undiscovered
• Fungi account for roughly 90% of Earth's unknown biodiversity
• Forest fungi help tackle climate change, absorbing up to 36% of global fossil fuel emissions annually and storing around 5 billion tonnes of carbon in the planet's topsoil

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
FIXTURES

New Zealand v France, second Test
Saturday, 12.35pm (UAE)
Auckland, New Zealand

South Africa v Wales
Sunday, 12.40am (UAE), San Juan, Argentina

Tearful appearance

Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday. 

Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow. 

She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.

A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
F1 drivers' standings

1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes 281

2. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari 247

3. Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes 222

4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull 177

5. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari 138

6. Max Verstappen, Red Bull 93

7. Sergio Perez, Force India 86

8. Esteban Ocon, Force India 56