Driverless Shuttle Crashes Two Days After Service Launches In Orlando

 A driverless shuttle crashed with passengers on board Tuesday — just two days after the service launched in Orlando, Florida. 

The minor crash was caught on camera by a passenger who was testing out the new “Shuttling with Autonomous Navigation” (SWAN) vehicle. Police said no one was injured after the autonomous vehicle collided with the side of a bus driving by, according to WKMG. Both the shuttle and the bus had minor cosmetic damage from the collision, police said. 

“Tried out the new SWAN Shuttle [autonomous] shuttle in Downtown Orlando today,” said the passenger, who shared his video on TikTok. “We crashed.”

@samorlando220 Tried out the new SWAN Shuttle auntonmous shuttle in Downtown Orlando today. We crashed. #Beep ♬ original sound – Sam Gallaher

SWAN shuttles, powered by software company Beep Technologies, launched on Sunday and is offered to residents and tourists for free. The shuttle travels on a continuous one-mile, five-stop loop, carrying passengers “from Lynx Central Station through Creative Village on the LYMMO Orange Line during off-peak hours,” according to a press release from the Orlando government. 

“This innovative, future-ready transportation pilot will allow us to test the impacts of modernization and improved user experience …” the press release added. 

San Francisco ran into issues with autonomous vehicles after it expanded its self-driving taxi fleet earlier this year. After multiple accidents, including a crash with a fire truck, city officials asked to cut the driverless taxi fleet by 50%, Forbes reported. In the collision with the fire truck, the self-driving car reportedly did not yield to the emergency vehicle at an intersection, causing the accident that injured a passenger. 

“They should take a time-out and a pause until they’ve perfected this technology in a way where people don’t end up burning to death or getting injured,” San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin said last week, according to CBS.

 

Autonomous tech companies Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project, and Cruise, a subsidiary of GM, announced plans to expand their driverless car technology in Sunbelt states such as Texas and North Carolina.