Toyota halts use of self-driving vehicle at Paralympic village after collision with visually impaired athlete

Aug 29, 2021 07:00 pm News 200

Toyota has suspended use of all of its self-driving e-Palette transportation pods at the Tokyo Paralympic Games village. That announcement coming on Friday, a day after one of the vehicles collided with a visually impaired athlete."This collision has caused worry for a lot of people and I am very sorry," Toyota chief executive Akio Toyoda said. In a YouTube video, Toyoda said the incident showed that autonomous vehicles are "not yet realistic for normal roads." "So why did this accident occur? I think we can say that we weren't able to cope enough with this special environment for the Paralympics where there are people who cannot see and have disabilities." The e-Palette, a fully autonomous battery-electric vehicle, was adapted specifically for use during the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. The vehicle in question had stopped at a T-junction and was under the manual control of the operator, who was using its joystick. While You Were Sleeping: 3 more Canadian medals after controversy in pool:

While You Were Sleeping: 3 more Canadian medals after controversy in the pool4 hours agoBrent Lakatos won his second silver medal on the track, while Stefan Daniel took bronze in the Para triathlon. Meanwhile, Canadian swimmers got a surprise medal after a whirlwind relay. 4:38 It collided with the pedestrian going at around one or two kilometres an hour, Toyoda said. He added that Paralympic officials had told him the athlete, who remained conscious, was taken to a medical centre for treatment and was able to walk back to their residence. The company said it was co-operating with a local police probe to determine the cause of the accident, adding that it would also conduct its own investigation.