Uber self-driving car kills Arizona woman. Dashcam released. Who's at fault?

Police on Wednesday released a video that shows an Uber robot car running straight into a woman who was crossing a highway with her bicycle in Tempe, Ariz. The woman was taken to a hospital, where she died Sunday night.

The video, shot from the car, is sure to raise debate over who's to blame for the accident. Although the woman appears to be illegally jaywalking from a median strip across two-lane traffic on a dark road, she is more than halfway across the street when the car — traveling about 40 mph, according to police — hits her. It does not appear to brake or take any other evasive action.

Meantime, the Uber employee who's sitting behind the wheel of the self-driving test car is seen gazing at his lap before looking up in shock around the time of impact.

Uber, which also tests autonomous semi-trucks in Arizona, has temporarily halted all driverless testing.

On Monday, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir saying: "It's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway…. I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident, either."
The Times asked a Tempe police spokesman whether the chief still suspects Uber is not at fault. The department has yet to respond.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has made driverless car deployment a key pillar of the state's economic development efforts.

The matter is being investigated in detail by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Traffic Safety Board.

Alain Kornhauser, a professor at Princeton University and a leading driverless car expert who believes the technology will ultimately prove far safer than human drivers, reviewed the video Wednesday.

"What we now need is for the release of the radar and lidar data," he said in an email. Lidar is a sensing technology that uses light from a laser. "Obviously, the video of the driver is extremely bad for Uber and probably implies that Uber should suspend all of its 'self-driving' efforts for a while if not for a very long while.

"The 'self-driving' systems are supposed to have 'professional' overseers who are really supposed to be paying attention during these 'tests'. Apparently Uber didn't make it clear in this case."

Kornhauser questioned the police description of a situation that would have been difficult to avoid. He said Uber should reveal what its collision-avoidance software was doing during the couple of seconds before impact.

"The front-facing video suggests that this person was crossing the lane at a slow speed and should have been noticed by the system in time to at least apply the brakes, if not stop the vehicle completely," he said. "While a human may not have been able to avoid this crash, a well-designed, well-working collision avoidance system should have at least begun to apply the brakes."

Bryant Walker Smith, law professor and driverless specialist at the Universith of South Carolina, said "Although this appalling video isn't the full picture, it strongly suggests a failure by Uber's automated driving system and a lack of due care by Uber's driver as well as by the victim."

Uber issued a prepared statement Wednesday: "The video is disturbing and heartbreaking to watch, and our thoughts continue to be with Elaine's loved ones. Our cars remain grounded, and we're assisting local, state and federal authorities in any way we can."

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kluke15 said:

i put blame on the ped. i watched the video 6 times looking at her exact location and still couldnt see her until it was too late for any kind of intervention.

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