She was rushed to a hospital but passed away due to her injuries. Uber has pulled all of its self-driving cars from public roads in the state as well as in the cities of San Francisco, Toronto, and Pittsburgh.
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The safety of autonomous technology is not proven, and there are many unanswered questions about how “driverless” technology is supposed to operate. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board have been dispatched to the scene to collect evidence and make an independent assessment.
It is the first time the autonomous technology leads to a fatality. Tempe police noted that the self-driving vehicle did not slow down before hitting the pedestrian.
“That’s a real contrast that we should keep in mind about this”, he said. “We do need to think through the strategy to take all the shortcuts we can find”, said another from the engineer on the same day. “We should be terrified about human driving”.
Many states and territories in the US allow autonomous vehicle trials on public roads, with the federal government only imposing voluntary guidelines.
Many states across America have welcomed the tests in the hope of keeping themselves at the forefront of new technology.
While the machine-learning and autonomous driving technology are creating a strong buzz in the mobility sector and various auto manufacturer and technology companies are working on this sector, the latest incident comes as a blow to the development process. The reports, which document when a test driver had to intervene, are filed annually with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ website, but no such disclosures are required in Arizona.
A DRIVERLESS Uber vehicle which struck a mother-of-two in Arizona was not to blame for her death, police have said.
In the UK, Gatwick Airport is planning to test self-driving shuttle buses this summer.
Friends said Herzberg had struggled with homelessness. Governor Doug Ducey in 2015 signed an executive order for Uber to allow unmanned vehicle tests. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe.
Although it appears, at this early stage, the pedestrian was at fault, it’s not impossible the car’s backup driver could face legal action.
Ryan Calo, a researcher studying the legalities involved in vehicle autonomy at the University of Washington, outlined that even if the pedestrian is found partly responsible in the Uber incident, the company will also be held liable.
And maybe all that information can be fed into the data system that recorded a fatality that resulted from a crash of a Tesla vehicle operating in autopilot mode in Florida in May of 2016. Neither the driver or the victim were impaired at the time of the crash.
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The U.S. Transportation Department is considering further voluntary guidelines that it says would help foster innovation.
