Toyota resumes autonomous bus service after Paralympic athlete incident

UPDATE, August 31: Toyota has announced its e-Palette pods will resume service at the Paralympic Games after investigating a collision with a pedestrian last week.

Through working with the Games' organisers to determine the cause of the incident, Toyota found the vision-impaired pedestrian was walking alone with only two guides manning the crossing where the collision occurred – who were unable to warn him of the oncoming vehicle.

While the e-Palette pod was under manual control, both the operator and the vehicle itself had applied its emergency brakes – which reduced its speed before the contact.

Changes to prevent further occurrences have now been implemented – including an increase in the volume of warning sounds and the number of crew in the autonomous vehicles, as well as more guides at each street crossing.

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August 30: The Paralympic Games will now be without autonomous travel support from Toyota after one of the manufacturer's e-Palette pods hit a pedestrian – resulting in the service being suspended.

Designed for transport in the Athletes' Village, the incident occurred when a vision-impaired participant was attempting to cross the road as the e-Palette was approaching.

While the pod was under manual control at the time and the athlete was uninjured, Toyota has suspended the use of the pods at the Paralympic Games, saying: "We would also like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to those who use our mobility vehicles in the Athletes' Village".

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Toyota is currently working with the local authorities to determine the cause of the collision, given the autonomous was under manual control at the time.

"We are fully co-operating with the police investigation into the incident in order to determine the cause of this accident," said Toyota.

"In addition, we will conduct our own thorough investigation into the cause and we will continue to coordinate closely with the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to ensure we prevent any incidents from occurring in the future."

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Toyota's CEO Akio Toyoda apologised to the athlete and said it was a reminder autonomous vehicles are still a developing technology, according to the ABC.

"A vehicle is stronger than a person, so I was obviously worried about how they were," said Toyoda.

"It shows that autonomous vehicles are not yet realistic for normal roads."

The Japanese manufacturer has been a major supporter of this year's Tokyo Paralympic and Olympic Games, although it announced it would be removing any TV commercials during the Games due to the worsening COVID-19 situation in Japan.