Uber Fails in Pedestrian Death, Leaves AZ for CA Testing

According to a story in the Phoenix Business Journal, the news that Uber’s car viewed the pedestrian six seconds before hitting her, but did nothing to brake or divert the impact.

The 2017 Volvo XC90’s self-driving system registered radar and lidar observations of Elaine Herzberg before it hit the woman at 43 mph, according to a news release from the NTSB. At 1.3 seconds before the crash, the self-driving system registered the need to brake to avoid a collision, but emergency braking is not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control. Also, Uber’s self-driving system is not designed to alert the driver, who is expected to intervene, according to the release.

“These details of the fatal crash point to at least two serious flaws in Uber’s self-driving system: software that’s not yet ready to replace humans, and humans that are ill-equipped to keep their would-be replacements from doing harm,” stated a story in Wired magazine.

The Uber driver looked up and grabbed the steering wheel less than a second before the fatal crash and began braking less than a second after impact. In an interview with the NTSB, she said she had been monitoring the self-driving interface and although her personal and business cellphones were inside the car, they were not in use.

read more at phoenixbusinessjournal.com