Self-driving school bus test stopped in the United States

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Transdev

The French transport company Transdev has received orders from US control authorities to stop the "illegal" test of a driverless school bus in Florida.

The regulator said the company was not allowed to transport schoolchildren to Florida and the test was "irresponsible" and "inappropriate".

Transdev said it would stop the test a week earlier.

The firm stated that it believed the pilot met the test requirements.

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the EZ10 Generation II driverless shuttle test in the Babcock Ranch community in Florida was irrelevant for what the company had been allowed to do.

"Innovation should not be threatened by public safety," said Heidi King, deputy director of NHTSA, in a statement released Monday.

"Using a non-compliant test vehicle to transport children is irresponsible, inappropriate and in direct violation of the terms of the Transdev approved test project," she added.

NHTSA stated that it had authorized Transdev to import the driverless shuttle temporarily in March for test and demonstration purposes, but not as a school bus.

The regulator said he sent a letter to the company ordering him to "immediately stop transporting schoolchildren" or to be fined, "the cancellation of the import authorization temporary and / or export of the vehicle ".

Transdev stated that it voluntarily agreed to stop testing and that "the small pilot operated safely, without any problem, in a highly controlled environment".

The company stated that it believed that the pilot project met the requirements of the NHTSA-approved test and demonstration project to allow adults and children to follow the same route.

He added that he was not sacrificing security for the sake of progress, that he would never, and that he was determined to comply with the regulations.

In August, the company announced that the fully electric 12-person shuttle, operating with a security guard, reached a top speed of 8 mph, with a potential of up to 30 mph.

Transdev North America is a unit of Transdev controlled by the French investment fund Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations.

A number of low-speed automatic shuttles are being tested in cities around the world and more are planned.

In November 2017, an autonomous shuttle to Las Vegas was involved in an accident on the first day of his service, which, according to the police, is the fault of the human driver of a truck.

In the UK, driverless buses are under development in Cambridge.