The TuSimple crash raises safety culture questions

A WSJ scoop confirms the TuSimple April 6th crash video and FMCSA investigation.  See: https://www.wsj.com/articles/self-driving-truck-accident-draws-attention-to-safety-at-tusimple-11659346202?st

This article validates what we saw in this video showing the crash: https://lnkd.in/ebGF4Quv

TuSimple blames human error, but it sounds more like a #moralcrumplezone situation, with serious safety culture concerns if the story reflects what is actually going on there.A left turn command was pending from a previous disengagement minutes before. When re-engaged the system started executing a sharp left turn while at 65 mph on a multi-lane highway. That resulted in crossing another traffic lane, a shoulder, and then hitting a barrier.
The safety driver reacted as quickly as one could realistically hope — but was not able to avoid the crash. A slightly different position of an adjacent vehicle would have meant crashing into another road user (the white pickup truck in an adjacent lane can be seen in the video). This was a non-injury crash, but only by good luck.

If they really insist on blaming the driver for not following procedures perfectly, they should have been mentioning how their SMS will improve procedure compliance. (Was there a 2-person pre-engagement checklist? Why was it not followed? Procedure compliance is never 100% and this was too dangerous to leave to just procedural risk mitigation — so what were they thinking?) But we just heard a technical band-aid for this particular failure mode. That is far short of a reasonable SMS response to such a severe incident.

The article gives signs of problematic safety culture: “Safety drivers, meanwhile, have flagged concerns about failures in a mechanism that didn’t always enable them to shut off the self-driving system by turning the steering wheel, a standard safety feature, other people familiar with the matter said. Company management dismissed the safety drivers’ concerns, the people said.” (Not independently investigated, at least yet; have to wonder if this factored into the crash.)

TuSimple has said in its VSSA that it is following the safety standards ISO 26262 and ISO/PAS 21448. However, in the article there is a description of a lawsuit raising doubts. The key bit is an allegation that “he was wrongfully fired after he refused to sign off on safety standards that he said the company had yet to meet.”

TuSimple comment before this story ran: https://lnkd.in/evkWiNiy

Excellent reporting by Kate O’Keefe and Heather Somerville