Pedestrian Struck And Killed By Uber Autonomous Car
Uber has halted its North American autonomous testing programme following a fatality involving one of the ride-sharing firm’s specially-adapted Volvo XC90s.
While running in autonomous mode - with a safety operator behind the wheel - the vehicle hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was pushing a bicycle across the road in Tempe, Arizona on Sunday night. She was taken to hospital, but later died from her injuries. It’s thought to be the first fatal accident involving an autonomous car and a pedestrian.
According to local police, Herzberg was not using a pedestrian crossing at the time of the accident. Uber says that it is “fully cooperating” with authorities, while CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: “We’re thinking of the victim’s family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened.”
This isn’t the first time Uber has temporarily taken its autonomous cars - which are also tested in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto - off the road. In March last year, the company temporarily suspended the test programme after one of the modified XC90s crashed into anther car and flipped onto its side in Tempe. The other vehicle had failed to yield, highlighting one of the problems with testing autonomous vehicles amidst regular traffic.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I’m sorry but autonomous cars are not ready, the technology isn’t there yet, like Clarkson said “take one to death road and if you make it to the end I’ll buy one”.
Wasn’t there a test video of the pedestrian detection system and it hit the guy who was doing the test?
She just crossed in the middle of the road ive seen people doing this over the highway jaywalking isnt just annoying it can be insanely dangerous
Darn you skynet
I really like the idea of telling the car where you want to go and then sit back and relax while the car takes you there, however there is no way in a million years I’ll be getting in a car that had no steering wheel or pedals to override the car. Think of it this way, Airplanes, the plane can fly all by itself thanks to the autopilot, so it could takeoff, fly and land all by itself, but would you ever get on a plane that has no pilots? No, and that’s a really big issue with Autonomous cars.
Seems like the single worst place to cross the street
Car companies are rushing into the development of autonomous cars too quickly. People say that by as soon as 2025 fully autonomous cars will become mainstream. I simply cannot believe that such a vast change will happen in less than ten years time; people have been driving their cars the same way for decades. Therefore I believe that any fully autonomous cars in the near future will be confined to dense urban areas and we are still a long way off from the “driverless dream”.