In early April, a tractor-trailer equipped with autopilot technology turn to the road without warning, cut crossed the I-10 freeway in Tucson, Arizona and crashed into a cement barricade.
Follow The Wall Street JournalAccident reports were published in June by the regulator, indicating concern that autonomous trucking company, TuSimple, risking the public safely on the road to bring its products to market. That’s according to independent analysts and more than a dozen former employees of the company.
Now, the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Administration, an agency within the DOT that regulates trucks and buses, has launched a “safety compliance investigation” into the company.. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also participating in the investigation.
TuSimple saying that human error is to blame for the April incidentbut autonomous driving experts detailed in a June regulatory disclosure and internal company documents that show fundamental problems with the company’s technology.
Video of the accident was posted on a trucking YouTube channel.
An internal document, filmed by WSJ, Statuses the truck suddenly turned left because a person in the cabin did not restart the autopilot properly before using it. That makes AI to make a 2.5 . left turn old minutes. If the truck is traveling 65 mph, that command has to be nearly three miles down the road… that’s not good. That command should have been removed from the system, but it wasn’t.
On its website, TuSimple acknowledged the investigation and said it was their responsibility to find and resolve safety issues.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University argue that it’s all human error. They say that the usual safeguards – like making sure the system can’t respond to commands more than a few percent –of the-one-second old or caused the self-driving system to fail to function properly – could have prevented the crash. They also suggest that it might be a good idea to have the system not allow an automatically controlled truck to make such a sharp turn while driving at 65 mph.
Phil Koopman, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon who has contributed to international safety standards for autonomous vehicles, said: “This information shows that the testing they are doing on public roads is very tedious. safe.
TuSimple said that after the crash, they modified the autopilot system so that humans could not use it unless the computer system was fully operational. A former TuSimple engineer said the move is long overdue. A TuSimple spokesperson, in response, said the April crash was the only one where a company truck was responsible for an accident.
Although this accident had two people on board, TuSimple is also testing driverless “Ghost Rider” trucks on public roads. That started back in December 2021. That was supposed to happen only after 500 actual runs, but reportedly the company completed less than half that number before the December run. .
The accident comes after years of management pushing back with what some former employees say were long-term safety and security issues.
In late 2021, a group of employees raised some of these issues with the legal department, according to people familiar with the matter. One presentation included the company’s alleged failure to regularly test its software for vulnerabilities and use unencrypted communications to manage trucks, which could create an opportunity for misinformation. Hackers intercept data between engineers and vehicle systems.
Safe drivers, meanwhile, have raised concerns about flaws in a mechanism that doesn’t always allow them to turn off the self-driving system by turning the steering wheel, a standard safety feature. , others familiar with the matter said. Residents said company management dismissed drivers’ concerns about safety.
A TuSimple spokesperson said the company is “actively solicitings and evaluate flags, concerns and risks that our employees identify to be able to address. “
TuSimple has been a leader in autonomous truck development since its launch in 2015. It is supported by UPS, US Xpress and Volkswagen.
