First driverless car accident in Singapore – nuTonomy’s self-driving vehicle collides with lorry

Land Transport Authority (LTA) shared in its Facebook today that a self-driving vehicle belonging to nuTonomy was involved in a minor incident at Biopolis Drive in one-north at 9.28am today (18 Oct).

LTA said that the test vehicle was changing lane when it collided with a lorry at a low speed. There were no injuries. LTA and the Police are investigating the cause of the incident.

The proprietors of the driverless car, nuTonomy, said in a statement that it was cooperating fully with LTA’s and the Police’s probe on the accident, as well as conducting its own investigation.

It said that the vehicle was travelling “at a low speed” when the accident took place, and that two engineer were in the car at the time of the incident. LTA requires qualified safety drivers have to be on board such driverless cars at all times, “ready to take over immediate control of the vehicles when necessary”.

According to comments posted by Facebook user Michael Chong in the Singapore Taxi Driver group, the side of the lorry was dented and the bumper of the driverless car was damaged.
In May 2016, a 40-year-old driver of an electric Tesla car was killed in a road accident in the USA. He had set the car on a driverless Autopilot mode, but the car failed to recognise an oncoming lorry and went underneath it.

The death of the Tesla driver sparked a debate on the future of such cars.