A driverless taxi in China hit a pedestrian and users in social networks They sided with the company car because the person was crossing against the red light, according to reports.
The vehicle’s operator, Chinese tech giant Baidu, said in a statement to Chinese media that the car started moving when the traffic light turned green and made light contact with the pedestrian. The person was taken to hospital, where an examination found no obvious external injuries, according to the firm.
Sunday’s incident in Wuhan highlights the challenge facing autonomous driving in complex situations, according to Chinese financial daily Yicai. The paper cited an expert who said the technology could have limitations when dealing with unconventional behavior such as traffic violations by pedestrians and other vehicles.
Images posted online showed a person sitting on the street in front of a self-driving car with sensors on its roof. Most comments on social media supported Baidu and said the pedestrian had broken the law, according to a post on X of the English-language Shanghai Daily.
Beijing-based Baidu, which has a popular internet search engine and artificial intelligence research, is leading the development of autonomous driving in the country. Its largest taxi service, with a fleet of 300 cars, is in Wuhan, a large city in central China that suffered the world’s first major COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020.
Apollo Go, as the taxi service is called, also operates on a more limited basis in three other Chinese cities: Beijing, Shenzhen and Chongqing. The firm unveiled the sixth generation of its driverless taxis in May and said it had cut the cost per unit by more than half, to less than $30,000.
Source: Gestion
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