Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Woman Crossing Street
March 19th, 2018Update: Police Release Video
The LIDAR system should have easily been able to detect that a pedestrian was in the road. Additionally, despite the difficult lighting situation, an alert human driver probably wouldn’t have hit the woman. A professional driver, trained in defensive driving techniques, almost certainly wouldn’t have hit the woman. The ride-along driver in this case was obviously distracted.
I find it very strange that the AI made no attempt to swerve to avoid the person or slow the vehicle. This could have been a case that showed how autonomous systems can shine in difficult situations…
To me, this looks like both the human driver and Uber’s self-drive system are to blame for this death.
I drove for FedEx for five years. All couriers have to be internally certified for the road by a FedEx defensive driving specialist. Decades later, I still drive the way I was taught at FedEx and have avoided many serious accidents using the techniques (especially in NZ, which has the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered anywhere in the world). If this accident had happened with a FedEx driver behind the wheel, FedEx would have assigned blame to the driver. No doubt about it. Show the video of what happened to any FedEx driver or ground ops manager and ask them if the company would call this “Preventable” or “Not Preventable”? Definitely, 100% preventable.
Via: Engadget:
The Tempe Police department has released video (warning: this video may be disturbing to some) taken by the interior and exterior cameras of the Uber SUV that struck and killed a woman, Elaine Herzberg, on Sunday night. The video shows the immediate moments before the crash, and the police said that the Vehicular Crimes Unit is actively investigating.
Based on the video, it appears that the victim had already walked across one lane on that side of the street with her bike, but was in the shadows until the car reached her. Inside, the human safety driver looks down toward her lap, and looks up just before the crash, appearing to be surprised. It’s difficult to tell in the grainy black and white view exactly how much any driver would be able to see and when. Still, it seems like a self-driving car’s LIDAR sensors should have been able to pick up the presence and motion of a pedestrian even if she went into the street away from a crosswalk.
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Update: Tempe Police Chief Says Early Probe Shows No Fault by Uber
Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode.
“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”
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Via: Reuters:
An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, police said on Monday, marking the first fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation.
The ride services company said it was suspending North American tests of its self-driving vehicles, which are currently going on in Arizona, Pittsburgh and Toronto.
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Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking outside the crosswalk on a four-lane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 p.m. MST Sunday (0400 GMT Monday) when she was struck by the Uber vehicle, police said. The car was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel.
Herzberg later died from her injuries in a hospital, police said.
