by david shepardson washington federal transportation safety officials headed to las vegas on friday to investigate a collision this week between a selfdriving shuttle bus on its first day of service and a truck which was blamed on human error the us national transportation safety board which has the power to issue safety recommendations and determines probable causes of crashes wants to learn more about how selfdriving vehicles interact with their environment and the other humandriven vehicles around them said ntsb spokesman christopher oneil there have been other crashes involving selfdriving vehicles but this was the first involving a selfdriving vehicle operating in public service oneil said four ntsb investigators were expected to arrive in las vegas on friday the navya arma an autonomous and electric vehicle operated by keolis north america went into service on wednesday a few hours later a delivery truck backed into the stopped shuttle according to a reporter on the shuttle and one of its sponsor companies las vegas police issued the truck driver a ticket the city government said in a blog post the shuttles front end sustained minor damage including a crumpled front fender and resumed service on thursday the shuttle did what it was supposed to do in that its sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped the city said also read china develops selfdriving electric city buses the automobile association of america aaa of southern nevada one of the shuttles sponsors said it would assist the safety boards investigation working together and sharing information will ensure this new technology is safely implemented for the public and thats aaas top priority the organization said in a statement the shuttle is also sponsored by the city of las vegas keolis north america and the regional transportation commission of southern nevada reporter jeff zurschmeide who was on the shuttle at the time of the crash said the selfdriving vehicle did what it was programmed to do but not everything a human driver might do thats a critical point zurschmeide wrote on digitaltrendscom we had about 20 feet of empty street behind us i looked and most human drivers would have thrown the car into reverse and used some of that space to get away from the truck or at least leaned on the horn and made our presence harder to miss the crash follows a rising number of incidents involving human drivers behaving improperly or recklessly around selfdriving cars there have been 12 crashes in california alone since sept 8 involving general motors cos selfdriving unit cruise automation all were the fault of human drivers in other vehicles gm told regulators also read alphabets waymo to launch robotaxis with no human in drivers seat the ntsb investigated a may 2016 crash of a tesla inc model s that killed a driver using the vehicles semiautonomous autopilot system in september the board recommended that auto safety regulators and automakers take steps to ensure that semiautonomous systems were not misused reporting by david shepardson editing