TOYOTA Sienna Incident

A May autonomous shuttle (Ego) is approaching a passenger stop location in autonomy. The vehicle operator (AVO) presses on the accelerator, taking control of the Ego, then accelerates into the curb at the stop. The Ego made contact with the curb 3 seconds after switching into manual, causing severe damage to the front-right tire. Resimulation of this event shows that there were no autonomy errors that led to this event, and had the Ego stayed in autonomy, this event would not have happened. This AVO had just completed our training course with only a few hours of service time before this incident. Upon further review of the AVO performance, on their own, it was decided to remove her from the AVO role.