It was Wednesday, just before 4.30 p.m., when the driver of the autonomous bus from the municipality of Pörtschach deactivated the automatic control in order to steer the bus manually. When the man put the bus back into operation, it could no longer be controlled for initially unknown reasons. The bus then drove unbraked into three parked vehicles in the area of the station.
According to the police report, there was considerable damage to all vehicles. The bus and one of the vehicles involved were so badly damaged that they were no longer drivable. They had to be towed. The exact cause of the accident was initially unknown. Nobody was injured in the accident. There were no passengers on the bus, and no people are said to have been in the vicinity of the bus.
“bus oversteered”
As Walter Prutej, head of the SURAAA (Smart Urban Region Austria Alps Adriatic) project, reports, an initial analysis of the course of the accident has already been made. It was a human-caused driving error, the bus was oversteered. The autonomous bus, which is in daily operation, was off the automated route at the time of the accident. The driver wanted to drive the bus to the garage at walking pace after the bus had finished driving. According to Prutej, the man is an experienced and suitably trained operator.
“Driving was stopped immediately and until further notice and the self-driving bus was taken out of service. The vehicle and the course of the accident are now being thoroughly investigated so that something like this can’t happen again in the future,” Prutej continued. Further safety measures are also to be introduced with regard to operation during this parking manoeuvre.
The self-driving bus has been on the road in Pörtschach since 2017. At the same time, this is the only autonomous bus currently in operation in Austria. So far, the vehicle has been accident-free. The Wörthersee municipality has also been an EU test region for self-driving buses since 2021.