REAL LIFE NEWS: PEDESTRIAN BECOMES FIRST PERSON KILLED BY AN AUTONOMOUS CAR
by Hazed
An Uber autonomous vehicle has achieved the dubious distinction of being the first self-driven car to kill a pedestrian. Last Sunday night, the car struck 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing the road while pushing a bicycle, in Tempe, Arizona.
The vehicle was driving itself but it had a human pilot behind the wheel to act as a safety driver.
The Tempe police chief concluded after viewing the footage from the car’s camera, “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 [the victim] came from the shadows right into the roadway.” This sounds like it was just an unavoidable accident – or even if the pedestrian was to blame for walking into the road unexpectedly.
However, since then a video has been released of the incident which includes views of the safety driver, and the view she had of the road. It shows Herzberg appearing from the dark seconds before the car struck her. Researchers who have viewed the footage are now questioning why the self-driving system’s sensors couldn’t see Herzberg well in advance. After all, they are designed to “see” in the dark.
Steven Shladover, a research engineer from Berkeley who has been studying automated systems for decades, said: “I think the sensors on the vehicles should have seen the pedestrian well in advance. If she had been moving erratically, it would have been difficult for the systems to predict where this person was going,” but the video doesn’t show any evidence of that.
The video also shows that the safety driver looked away at the crucial moment which explains why she didn’t try to take control to avoid the collision.
Uber has suspended trials of its self-driving cars while the incident is being investigated.
This tragic accident makes it clear that there is still a long way to go before autonomous vehicles can be trusted on roads where they encounter humans doing unexpected things.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/19/uber_self_driving_car_fatal_crash/
https://www.wired.com/story/uber-self-driving-crash-video-arizona/
