- 24 min ago
- Julien Russo
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React
Every day, Apple-owned vehicles drive through the streets of major California cities. The Cupertino company wishes to obtain as much data as possible in real conditions to help the development of its future autonomous driving software.
2 minor collisions
It has been now 2 years that Apple cars drive around California without causing no problem, which is not always the case with competitors who also develop autonomous driving software!
For the first time, two autonomous Apple cars (which were in mode manuel) have caused a collision with another vehicle. As revealed by the California DMV, this is new for Apple since the company had never been the subject of an accident report since the start of the agreement of experimentation with autonomous cars.
The first incident happened on August 19 in San Diego, Apple’s Lexus RX 450h (a brand of electric car selected for real-world testing) was struck by a vehicle Hyundai. Clarification that the Apple employee who was driving the Lexus is not at fault in this case since he was stationary and the Hyundai car does not seem to have stopped in time.
The accident is described by the California DMV as being without gravity and without injury.
The second accident happened on August 23 in Cupertino in California, the city where Apple Park is located. Just a few miles from headquarters, a stationary Apple vehicle was struck in the back by a Subaru Outback, obviously the second accident is very similar to the first.
Each incident with an autonomous car during the test is subject to a ascent at the California Department of Motor Vehicles, as soon as the case is finished processing, the state agency publishes a report in PDF explaining how the accident happened and when it took place. A desire to transparency to reassure Californians who do not always look favorably on the full-scale experiments of autonomous vehicles from Apple, Uber, Tesla …
According to a report published a few months ago, the Lexuses used by Apple have traveled more than 28,968 kilometers, what we also notice is that the more time passes, the more Apple intensifies traffic and adding new ones.
Note that for the environmental aspect, Apple uses electric cars which have technology that allows the vehicle to be recharged while driving!
1st accident report
2nd accident report
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