A test run for an Avride self-driving car turned grim on Tuesday when the vehicle struck and killed a duck near Mueller Lake Park, rattling neighbors who say the bird had nested there for years. Residents quickly scooped up the duck’s eggs, which had been left behind, and are now tending to them in an incubator. The incident has locals openly wondering whether autonomous vehicles can reliably detect wildlife and other small hazards. Avride says it is pulling data from the car involved and has temporarily scaled back its routes around the lake while it digs into what happened.
Company statement and immediate response
In a statement to KXAN, Avride confirmed that one of its autonomous vehicles hit and killed a duck near Mueller Lake Park. The company said vehicle data shows the car “came to complete and appropriate stops at all relevant stop signs.”
Avride told KXAN it is treating the incident as a “wildlife collision” and is reviewing logs from the trip. While that investigation is underway, the company has excluded the streets around Mueller Lake from its autonomous testing routes.
Neighbors’ accounts
Neighbors quickly took to a Mueller Facebook group to vent and compare notes on what they saw. One poster said the Avride vehicle did not appear to slow before hitting the duck, while another claimed it rolled through a nearby stop sign, according to Axios.
Axios also reports that neighbors gathered up the duck’s eggs, which had been sitting in a pot outside L’Oca d’Oro, and moved them into an incubator in hopes of keeping them alive…