SINGAPORE — A self-driving car with two people on board got into an accident with another vehicle on Tuesday (Oct 18) at the one-north area, where a number of autonomous vehicle trials are being held.

The accident happened along Biopolis Drive at 9.28am, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said on its Facebook page, adding that the test vehicle was changing lanes when it hit a lorry. 

No one was hurt.

Both the LTA and the police are investigating the cause of the incident. 

It is not known if this is the first time a self-driving vehicle has been involved in an accident since public trials started last year.

nuTonomy, the first company given the green light to launch a trial for self-driving taxis here, confirmed that the self-driving car involved in the accident was one of its vehicles and that it was “conducting on-road testing” at the time. 

“The nuTonomy car, which was operating with two engineers on board, was travelling at a low speed at the time of the incident,” its spokesperson said, adding that it is cooperating fully with the investigation by the authorities. 

The company is also conducting its own investigation into the “exact cause” of the incident.

TODAY understands that the vehicle was not one of the self-driving taxis that nuTonomy is using in its trial with ride-hailing app Grab.

Transport consultant Tham Chen Munn said that it is too early to tell if this is a setback for the trial. “We have to wait for the accident forensics to come out. It could be a combination of factors such as environmental or situational factors, or human-versus-machine interaction that might not have been foreseen,” he said.

Separately, in a statement on Tuesday, the LTA said that it has put in place a safety framework to protect road users. 

For instance, qualified drivers have to be in the autonomous vehicles at all times, ready to take control if necessary, and all prototypes have to go through a basic safety demonstration before they are allowed on the roads at one-north.

Test routes, where the self-driving trials are being carried out, were doubled in length last month from the original 6km to a 12km network.  

Since July, infrastructure was progressively set up along the test routes to monitor the trials’ progress and to support the tests. 

There are closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at 20 locations to monitor the behaviour of autonomous vehicles at “critical” locations such as traffic junctions and road bends, as well as any challenges that may surface. The video footage could also serve as evidence should an accident occur, the LTA said.

There are also beacons that help the vehicles find their way by broadcasting information such as traffic-light signals, and a back-end system monitors the vehicles and sends out alerts when they are travelling outside of permitted boundaries, it added.

Since last year, one-north has served as a test-bed for driverless vehicles, and other organisations conducting trials there include the Agency for Science, Technology and Research. Another company, Delphi Automotive Systems, is also slated to start trials for on-demand autonomous vehicle services. 

Safety concerns over driverless vehicles made news in May, after a Tesla Model S crashed in autopilot mode in Florida, United States, and its driver died. 

It was the first fatality involving self-driving vehicles, and the fault was traced to a technical failure in the automatic braking system.