Apple records first-ever accident in self-driving car program [u]

AppleInsider

Apple's secretive self-driving car program has reported its first-ever accident, though no one was hurt. [Updated with more details]

A test car was rear-ended by a Nissan Leaf while merging onto an expressway, according to an account on TechCrunch. The Apple vehicle suffered "moderate" damage.

Details are still forthcoming, so it's unclear if the fault was with the Nissan driver, Apple's hardware and software, or some combination of the two. Ridesharing service Uber all but scrapped its self-driving tests once someone was killed in Arizona.

Apple has been working on self-driving car technology for several years, originally under the moniker "Project Titan." While the company was originally thought to be after a fully self-designed vehicle, at one point the effort downscaled to a platform, and further rumors suggested the long-term goal had shifted to ride-hailing.

More recently though, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo -- known for his connections in the Apple supply chain -- said that he believes the company will still deliver an "Apple Car" sometime between 2023 and 2025. Former engineering executive Doug Field recently returned to Cupertino after a nearly five-year stint at Tesla.

Apple has dozens of self-driving test cars on California roads, and that number may continue to increase once a real-world product is on the horizon.

Update: The Apple vehicle, a Lexus SUV, was merging onto the Lawrence Expressway in California's Bay Area on Aug. 24, Gurman later wrote, citing a filing by Apple's Steve Kenner with the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Leaf was moving at just 15 miles per hour, but was also damaged.

gatorguy

"On August 24th at 2:58 p.m., an Apple vehicle in autonomous mode was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto Lawrence Expressway South from Kifer Road. The Apple test vehicle was traveling less than 1 mph waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge when a 2016 Nissan Leaf contacted the Apple test vehicle at approximately 15 mph. Both vehicles sustained damage and no injuries were reported by either party."

nunzy

You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.

lkrupp

Every blip, every incident, every close call, every crash, anything to do with demonizing self-driving technology will be used to turn the general public against it, just like nuclear energy. Personal injury lawyers are salivating over the deep pocket possibilities. Heck, the news media is already working to turn people against smartphones as dangerous to your personal mental health. Technology is under attack from all directions. All I hear in my social circles is how proud someone is that they don’t have a smartphone and how they wouldn’t drive on the same road with one of those “computer” cars. 

claire1

This will be plastered all over the news! Apple Fails!!!

asdasd

lkrupp said:

Every blip, every incident, every close call, every crash, anything to do with demonizing self-driving technology will be used to turn the general public against it, just like nuclear energy. Personal injury lawyers are salivating over the deep pocket possibilities. Heck, the news media is already working to turn people against smartphones as dangerous to your personal mental health. Technology is under attack from all directions. All I hear in my social circles is how proud someone is that they don’t have a smartphone and how they wouldn’t drive on the same road with one of those “computer” cars. 

All technology has some problems.

Apple is after all trying to reduce phone dependency with iOS 12. And as for self driving cars, they really can't afford to have any bugs. If you are waiting for version 2.0 for stability its a failure. 

applesauce007

The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.

mdirvin

With 38,000 auto fatalities in the US every year, and 1.24 million world wide.  One fender bender (Apple), and one fatality (Uber) doesn't really look that bad.

dewme

applesauce007 said:

The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.

I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.

netrox

So, basically, it was a Nissan Leaf that rear-ended Apple Car. Nothing to see then.

mknelson

nunzy said:

You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.

I was going to joke about California traffic jams and then I checked the satellite pictures on Google and Apple maps… it looks like a ghost town!

ericthehalfbee

dewme said:

applesauce007 said:

The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.

I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.

Equipment that's part of the vehicle is not the same as a piece of art in your trunk. If your Nissan Leaf hit a Honda Civic and ruined the bumper your insurance might pay $2,000. If you hit a Ferrari and the bumper cost $20,000, your insurance still pays. The reason your insurance company will gladly pay for either type of claim is the fact that Ferrari is rare, and the chance of you getting into an accident with one is extremely small. So you don't need to buy additional insurance "just in case" you crash into an exotic car vs a regular car.

It's possible the Apple car will be viewed by the insurance company the same way a luxury or exotic would, and pay the claim. If not, I'm sure Apple also has additional insurance for their vehicles to cover all sorts of scenarios.

DAalseth

nunzy said:

You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.

Unless you are waiting for a hole in traffic. 1mph is essentially stopped. It was waiting for an opening.

baconstang

dewme said:

applesauce007 said:

The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.

I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.

Your liability policy will cover whatever damages you cause, up to the limit of your policy.  That's generally between $15K and $100K.  Anything beyond that YOU are still responsible for.

jcs2305

nunzy said:

You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.

Wouldn't an older person have more experience driving? Why would an old woman be someone that you would think has never merged into traffic before?

Stop this crazy Apple cheerleader madness!! Please!! It's all day every day! Hahaha wow man...

MacPro

gatorguy said:

"On August 24th at 2:58 p.m., an Apple vehicle in autonomous mode was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto Lawrence Expressway South from Kifer Road. The Apple test vehicle was traveling less than 1 mph waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge when a 2016 Nissan Leaf contacted the Apple test vehicle at approximately 15 mph. Both vehicles sustained damage and no injuries were reported by either party."

Isn't it normal to attribute  a quote or were you the writer?

applesauce007

dewme said:

applesauce007 said:

The Nissan that rear ends the Apple Car is at fault.

I cannot imagine any reason for rear end ending another car in front of you while going 15 miles per hour.
Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

At 15 miles an hour, you have to wonder if it was done on purpose.

I say make that Nissan Leaf's insurance pay for all the expensive Velodyne LiDAR sensors.  Could easily cost $100,000 or more in damages.

I seriously doubt that the faulty party (or their insurer) would have to pay for anything beyond the damage to the vehicle itself. If you get rear ended while carrying a $30 million dollar piece of art in your trunk would the offender be liable for the $30 million dollar work of art. Nope. They'd pay for your bumper and crumpled truck and you'd be SOL unless the $30 million dollar personal property was separately insured against accidental damage.

Well, not exactly.  
The expensive piece of art is not part of the car and it would be difficult to prove it's prior state.  Although it is not needed to make the car whole again, if it can be proven that it was damaged by the accident, you can be held responsible.

However the bumper, the tail lights, any cameras and any other sensor that is built into the back of the car that gets damaged in the accident must be replaced by the party that rear ends the other.  They are responsible for restoring the cart to the state that it was prior to the accident.

Note also that if a person inside the car gets injured or dies for example, the guilty party is responsible and in such a case if a camera can show that the car was rear ended on purpose then they could be charged with murder.

ascii

I think in the future 99% of cars will be self-driving but there will be a transition period where its 50-50 or less. And the trouble is people drivers will expect other cars to do things people would do, and a computer driver might do something non-intuitive.

I know Telsa is gathering telemetry from their cars even when not in autodrive mode, comparing what the autodrive *would* have done with what the person actually did. Perhaps instead of autodrive doing the optimal thing it should do what most people would have done in that situation, at least for the near future. In the long term it can just do optimal.

Latko

The Nissan driver may have become distracted clicking 10 beta nags/minute

Soli

jcs2305 said:

nunzy said:

You don't merge at 1 MPH. You merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining.

Unless you are an old lady who never has merged before. Then you cause accidents.

Wouldn't an older person have more experience driving? Why would an old woman be someone that you would think has never merged into traffic before?

Stop this crazy Apple cheerleader madness!! Please!! It's all day every day! Hahaha wow man…
[image]

And makes some odd statement about how you don't merge at 1 MPH and then proceeds to make a statement bout how you should "merge at the speed of the traffic you are joining," despite 1MPH could very well be the merging speed when you're in bumper-to-bumper traffic when merging from an on-ramp or changing lanes.

Soli

applesauce007 said:

Even if the person cuts you off, you are at always at fault for rear ending.

That's not even close to be accurate, and is the most illogical thing I've read non this forum in a long time.