Autonomous car kills dog in San Francisco

An autonomous car driving through the city streets of San Francisco struck and killed a dog last month – but the company that operates the vehicle claims the tragic incident was unavoidable.

US publication TechCrunch reports the autonomous Jaguar I-Pace – also referred to as a ‘self-driving car’ – was operating in San Francisco last month when a dog ran onto the road.

According to the incident report filed with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, the robotaxi’s autonomous driving systems detected the dog, however neither the vehicle’s on-board systems nor the human ‘safety operator’ in the driver’s seat applied the brakes.

A spokesperson for Waymo – the Google-affiliated company which operates the autonomous Jaguar I-Pace – told TechCrunch the collision was unavoidable, regardless of whether the brakes had been applied or not.

“The investigation is ongoing, however the initial review confirmed that the system correctly identified the dog which ran out from behind a parked vehicle but was not able to avoid contact,” said a Waymo spokesperson.

The spokesperson also claimed the dog took an “unusual path” at “a high rate of speed directly towards the side of the vehicle”, leading to the impact.

Some US websites – such as animal fence company Pet Playgrounds – claim approximately 1.2 million dogs are hit and killed by cars every year in the country, the equivalent of almost 3300 a day.

The incident is believed to be the first reported death of an animal caused by an autonomous car, however it comes five years after the first human pedestrian was killed by a self-driving vehicle.

In March 2018, Elaine Herzberg was fatally struck by an Uber autonomous test vehicle in Tempe, Arizona.

While the autonomous car’s human ‘safety back-up driver’ was later charged with negligent homicide, Uber was not held criminally responsible for the fatal incident.

According to US technology publication The Verge, Waymo – which is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet – reported its autonomous vehicles travelled one million miles (1.6 million kilometres) on public roads in California and Arizona between 2015 and 2023.

Across the eight-year period, the company reported two incidents to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s car crash database, while 18 more crashes had been classified as “minor contact events” – 55 per cent of which were caused by another vehicle hitting a parked Waymo car.

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