Self-driving ‘Apple Car’ reportedly ‘smacked into curbs, veered out of lanes, nearly hit jogger’

Apple’s self-driving cars had trouble navigating streets, frequently bumped into curbs and veered out of lanes in the middle of intersections during test drives near the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, according to a Monday report by The Information.

Ariel Zilber for the New York Post:

Apple’s self-driving cars had trouble navigating streets, frequently bumped into curbs and veered out of lanes in the middle of intersections during test drives near the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, according to a report…
Engineers at the iPhone maker were dismayed when the test vehicles struggled to conduct basic navigation maneuvers on city streets near the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.
According to The Information, the cars slammed into curbs and often had trouble staying in their lanes after crossing intersections.
A source told The Information that a local jogger was nearly hit by one of Project Titan’s cars as the runner was crossing the street. The car apparently did not recognize that the jogger had the right of way.
Apple’s self-driving car would differ from those being developed by rivals such as Google-backed Waymo, General Motors’ Cruise, and Amazon’s Zoox since it would have no steering wheel and pedals, with interiors designed around hands-off driving.

MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, the vehicle and systems are still in testing, so errors are to be expected (and test drivers are aboard to grab the wheel and/or slam on the brakes). That said, regarding a first-release vehicle without a steering wheel or brake pedal, as we wrote earlier this morning:
We can see the Doonesbury strip already.
If Apple ever gets around to releasing the first iteration of their vehicle with “no steering wheel or brake pedal,” they should name that model “Boondoggle.”
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