Video shows woman Killed in AZ Uber accident stepped suddenly in front car
Video shows woman stepped suddenly in front of Uber
By Molly Kissler, Alan Levin and Ryan, Bloomberg News
Published 3:20 p.m. ET March 20, 2018 | Updated 3:25 p.m. ET March 20, 2018
Police say a video from the Uber self-driving car that
struck and killed a woman Sunday shows her moving in front of it suddenly, a
factor that investigators are likely to focus on as they assess the performance
of the technology in the first pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous
vehicle.
The Uber had a forward-facing video recorder, which
showed the woman was walking a bike at about 10 p.m. and moved into traffic
from a dark center median. “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to
avoid this collision in any kind of mode,” Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe,
Arizona, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked
out in front of them,” Moir said, referring to the backup driver who was behind
the wheel but not operating the vehicle. “His first alert to the collision was
the sound of the collision.”
The chief’s account raises new questions in the
investigation that holds importance to the future of the burgeoning autonomous
vehicle industry. Uber Technologies Inc. halted autonomous vehicle tests in the
wake of the accident.
It’s too soon to draw any conclusions from the
preliminary information that has emerged, said Brian Walker Smith, a law
professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied autonomous
vehicle liability.
“It’s possible that Uber’s automated driving system did
not detect the pedestrian, did not classify her as a pedestrian, or did not
predict her departure from the median,” Smith said in an email. “I don’t know
whether these steps occurred too late to prevent or lessen the collision or
whether they never occurred at all, but the lack of braking or swerving
whatsoever is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the
collision.”
Police later said in a statement that the department
would defer to county prosecutors on whether to bring charges, but didn’t
dispute any of the information released by Moir.
In a news conference Monday, Tempe Police Sergeant Roland
Elcock said local authorities had not come to any conclusions about who is at
fault. Decisions on any possible charges will be made by the Maricopa County
Attorney’s office. Neither the victim nor the backup driver showed any signs of
impairment.
The victim, Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bike
outside of the crosswalk. The car was most likely going about 38 miles per
hour, Moir said. Nearby signs show the speed limit was either 35 or 40 mph,
though the 40 mph sign was closest to the accident site.
Sensors on self-driving cars – which may include laser-based
technology, radar and video – are designed to sense pedestrians and other
obstructions even in the dark.
The National Transportation Safety Board is opening an
investigation into the death and is sending a team of four investigators to
Tempe, about 10 miles east of Phoenix. The Department of Transportation’s
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dispatched a special crash
investigation team.
The NTSB opens relatively few highway accident probes
each year, but has been closely following incidents involving autonomous or
partially autonomous vehicles. Last year, it partially faulted Tesla Inc.’s
Autopilot system for a fatal crash in Florida in 2016.
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