Autonomous I-Pace Kills Dog In San Francisco

An autonomous Jaguar I-Pace struck and killed a dog while driving in San Francisco in what is believed to be the first reported animal death attributed to a ‘self-driving’ vehicle.

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. But Waymo, the company that operates the vehicle claims the tragic incident 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 a “path at a high rate of speed directly towards the vehicle”, leading to the impact.

US websites claim approximately 1.2 million dogs are hit and killed by cars every year in the USA, the equivalent of almost 3,300 a day.

The incident comes five years after the first pedestrian was killed by a selfdriving vehicle. In 2018, a woman was fatally struck by an Uber autonomous test vehicle in Tempe, Arizona.

Waymo reported its autonomous vehicles travelled one million miles (1.6 million kilometres) on public roads in California and Arizona between 2015 and 2023. During that 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.

Editor: Information for this story sourced from Drive Australia.