Lei Gang from The Vice Pilot Temple
Smart Car Reference Report | Official account AI4Auto
The global self-driving entrepreneurial head, even took the initiative to take a step back?
Although California has not yet started a new week, the news that Pony AI "disappeared" in the list of unmanned test lists has been the first to return to China.
Soon, Sina Technology's silicon valley reporter found that it was Xiaoma Zhixing who suffered an "accident" and then suspended the fully unmanned autonomous driving test in California.
And this matter is not dug, I don't know, the deeper I dig, the more interesting it is.
On the one hand, combined with the test accidents of Waymo and Apple this year, and the heat of the discussion of assisted driving accidents out of the circle, it seems to echo some kind of normalization of the general trend.
On the other hand, the attitude and manner in which the company concerned handled the accident was also quite interesting.
It boils down to one sentence: between the new stage of autonomous driving, the pony zhixing is retreating into progress.
Pony Chi Heng suspended the California "nobody" test
Today (December 13), some good people found that the California Traffic Management Authority's (DMV) list of fully unmanned autonomous driving road test licenses, the industry leader Pony Zhixing, disappeared in the middle.
Driverless Testing Permit, a fully unmanned autonomous driving test license, is a california qualification issued to industry technology leaders since the end of 2018.
Prior to this, the more widely known test license plate required a safety officer in the driver's seat.
After the issuance of all unmanned licenses, a total of 8 in the industry have been issued, including Waymo, Cruise, Baidu Apollo and Xiaoma Zhixing, etc., which are recognized as haoqiang, although the license does not have a strict assessment threshold, but it is still based on technology and strength.
So who increased and who decreased on the list began to become big news.
No, the pony Zhixing suddenly disappeared from the list, and soon spread in a small area, and quickly returned to China at the weekend time in the United States.
However, according to the sina technology reporter in Silicon Valley, the reason behind it is not unusual. It turned out that at the end of October this year, Xiaoma Zhixing encountered an accident in the unmanned test, and then took the initiative to suspend the total unmanned road test, and then withdrew from the test list.
The complete history of the accident is also described in detail in the report submitted to the DMV:
At about 10:00 a.m. on October 28, when the unmanned autonomous driving test vehicle (without safety officers in the main driver) built by Xiaoma Zhixing based on hyundai Motor's electric model Kona was conducting a road test in Fremont, California, the unmanned vehicle made a right turn from Cushing Pkwy Street to Fremont Avenue, and after the right turn was completed, it tried to change lanes to the left again. During the lane change, the unmanned vehicle collided with the barrier in the middle of the road, resulting in slight damage to the front of the vehicle.
The report also revealed that no persons were injured in the accident and that no other vehicles were involved. After the accident, Xiaoma Zhixing reported to the local transportation department at the first time, and submitted an accident report to the California Motor Vehicle Administration (DMV) within one working day, and also took the initiative to suspend the unmanned test in California.
To sum up, it is a scratch in a driverless test, and then the pony actively suspends the unmanned test in California.
In fact, with the continuous upgrading of the scale, mileage and scenario of the automatic driving road test, the accident in the process is no longer news, and the pony zhixing has attracted attention, or it is caused by the active suspension of the test.
So why take the initiative to pause after an accident like this?
After all, before that, also in California, there were similar minor accidents, but there were no cases of active suspension of testing.
On what grounds did Pony Zhixing set a precedent?
Pony's reply is: based on the principle of safety first.
Xiao ma said that it is also to carry out a technical review at the first time to ensure safety.
Of course, some people believe that because Xiaoma Zhixing has not had a similar record of active accidents before, this rubbing has just stimulated the company's internal accident response mechanism and process.
Because whether it is Xiaoma Zhixing, or the entire autonomous driving industry, it has now come to a new stage before the curtain opens.
This new stage is called the large-scale deployment of autonomous driving.
In this new phase, the probability of an accident may increase with the scale.
How to deal with accidents is a compulsory course for the industry and self-driving players.
Autonomous driving must go through the stage
Since the introduction of automatic driving into research and development, the "accident" has been hidden, and once because of the industry's "pig teammates", everything has been in the woods.
After the initial automatic driving started the internal test research and development, in fact, there have been no accidents, but due to the immaturity of the mechanism, policies and processing schemes, most of them have been "privately" handled.
Even during the exploration period, there were rumors of human-driven private cars to Beiqing Road and other places to "actively seek accidents" - at that time, there was no policy to rely on for the automatic driving road test, even if it was scratched, it could only take the initiative to trivialize.
Later, automatic driving entered a global boom, and the participating players worried that "accidents" would consume users' tolerance for new species, so they were once secretive, which also caused the idealized cognition of "automatic driving = zero accidents" in the later public opinion cognition.
What's worse, due to the irresponsible attitude of the radical player Uber in the road test, the world's first autopilot road test fatal accident caused a loss of the industry.
However, if from the scientific point of view, automatic driving from scratch, from small to large-scale deployment, from safety personnel to completely unmanned, the risk and probability of accidents will continue to increase.
Even this year, there have been more than one accident with well-known players in the test.
DMV data shows that since the beginning of this year, there have been 89 traffic accidents in 8 autonomous driving companies, involving the test of safety officers and the test of all unmanned people, and there are both active collisions and passive collisions of automatic driving.
Among them, there were 43 Traffic Accidents related to Waymo, 25 Cruise unmanned vehicles, 8 Zoox unmanned vehicles, 4 Apple unmanned vehicles, 3 Wenyuan Zhixing, 3 Argo AI unmanned vehicles, 2 Xiaoma Zhixing unmanned vehicles, and 1 Lyft unmanned vehicle.
For example, Waymo's "unmanned car hits people" accident. In June, Waymo was in San Francisco for a Robotaxi test when he turned left at an intersection and collided with a skateboarder...
And in late September, when Apple's self-driving car Silicon Valley hit the curb when it turned right at the intersection, causing the bumper to be misaligned.
None of the above accidents caused serious personal and property injuries, but they all show that a whole new phase of autonomous driving is beginning.
This new stage is precisely the stage when new technologies move from testing to stability, from maturity to maturity.
And since the beginning of this year, under the influence of the automatic driving revolution, whether it is the Robotaxi-oriented driverless faction or the intelligent car-oriented assisted driving faction, the topic of "safety" has begun to receive greater attention...
A science popularization and market education on the safe development of automatic driving has become more and more vigorous.
On the one hand, there is a growing consensus that "autonomous driving ≠ zero accidents"
Even if the data proves that the application of autonomous driving can greatly reduce the accidents caused by human driving behavior in traffic, it does not mean that automatic driving can completely eliminate accidents.
On the other hand, for the participants in the research and development of automatic driving, a set of safety assurance systems has also come to be applied.
Previously, whether in terms of quantity or scope, the safety and security of automatic driving was rarely challenged, but at this stage, with the opening of large-scale mass production and landing, the safety guarantee has reached the inspection moment.
This safety guarantee points not only to the reliability of the front installation, but also to the safety standards developed in cooperation with regulators in operation.
The intelligent car reference learned that in China alone, more industry-university-research forces spontaneously coordinated to disclose the progress related to automatic driving safety in a more normalized way.
So in the final analysis, for the development of autonomous driving, it is now between the old and new stages.
And Pony Zhixing's retreat in California this time, although it shows its own attitude, but also won the recognition of more players in the industry.
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