BHP blames heavy rains for autonomous trucks crash
The world’s largest miner, BHP, (ASX, LON:BHP) has blamed a collision between two autonomous trucks at its Jimblebar iron ore mine in the Pilbara, Western Australia, on significant rainfall affecting the area over the weekend.
The two trucks, one unloaded and travelling at about 14kph and the other, loaded and travelling at 27kph, lost traction on March 16 on the haul road and collided at about 11pm, BHP told 6PR News talk.
It is understood that no one was working in the direct area of the collision at the time, and no one was injured during the incident. An investigation into the cause of the incident is under way.
The accident comes only a month after Fortescue Metals (ASX:FMG) revealed that one of its massive driverless trucks collided with another, also in Western Australia.
Jimblebar was the first mine in BHP’s Pilbara iron ore portfolio to move completely to driverless trucks. The operation had a fleet of about 50 autonomous trucks by the end of 2017.
This is not the first mishap affecting BHP’s autonomous fleet. In November, the company deliberately derailed a runaway train in the Pilbara after it had taken off without its driver when an emergency brake turned itself off.
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5 Comments
Scott Jones
Anybody thats driven a haul truck will tell you that at times the haul roads become pretty wet and greasy and alot of human intervention is needed to control a 200 tonne haultruck. Not sure the programing could cope with correcting a skid when heading downhill.
steveboz .
Oresome, another illusory cost saving gone wrong. Pity with all this AI, the head Office somehow cannot be automated? Wonder why?
Roman Moroney
Would probably become more profitable if it was eh
Bob Hall
Driverless trucks? Sure. But driverless trains? Driverless management chairs? Where does it stop?
CJC
Interesting that comments are all about how people could have prevented these incidents. I wonder how many incidents similar to these occur in manned equipment? Many times with fatal consequences.