Driverless vehicle accident forces Paralympian to pull out of Tokyo 2020 event

Although he was not seriously injured, the accident meant that the visually impaired Paralympic judo star was forced to withdraw from Saturday’s 81kg category, which would have been his third appearance in this year’s event. 

All operations of the driverless vehicles were temporarily suspended whilst Toyota worked with the police to determine the cause of the accident. 

Following an extensive investigation, the company revealed in a statement that the vehicle managed to activate the automatic brakes and the operator also applied the emergency brakes after the pod’s sensor successfully detected the pedestrian. However, the collision occurred before the pod was able to come to a complete stop. 

“At the time of the collision, there were only two guide persons at the intersection. Given that there were no traffic signals, and especially in a situation like the Paralympics where there [is] a diverse range of people, it was not possible for guide persons to check the movements of all pedestrians and vehicles moving in multiple directions. In addition, there was not a sufficient mechanism for coordination between guides and vehicle operators,” Toyota explained.

In response to the incident, the carmaker has implemented new safety procedures to prevent any future accidents. These include louder approach-warning sounds, increasing the number of guides at intersections from the current six to over 20, more manual operator control, and providing further training to meet the safety needs of disabled pedestrians present at the Paralympics. 

Service of the self-driving vehicles was resumed on Monday 30 August.

Toyota’s e-Palette pods are autonomous electric vehicles that were designed specifically to transport staff and athletes around the Olympic and Paralympic Village. Toyota, which recently overtook Volkswagen as the world’s largest carmaker, plans to roll out the vehicles for use on public roads over the next decade. 

However, following Thursday’s accident, Akio Toyoda, Chief Executive of Toyota, admitted in a YouTube video that “autonomous vehicles are not yet realistic for normal roads”.