Uber halts self-driving tests after woman’s death

ARIZONA — A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle, a crash that could have farreaching consequences for the new technology.

The fatality on Sunday night in Tempe was the event many in the auto and technology industries were dreading but knew was inevitable.

Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The testing has been going on for months as automakers and technology companies like the ride-hailing service compete to be the first with cars that operate on their own.

The Volvo was in self-driving mode with a human backup driver at the wheel when it hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was walking a bicycle outside the lines of a crosswalk. She died at a hospital.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on Twitter and said the company is working with local law enforcement on the probe.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which can enact regulations, sent investigators.

Tempe police Sergeant Ronald Elcock said local authorities haven’t drawn any conclusions about who is at fault but urged people to use crosswalks. He told reporters at a news conference on Monday the Uber vehicle was traveling at about 65 km/h when it hit Herzberg immediately as she stepped on to the street.

Neither she nor the backup driver showed signs of impairment, he said.

The public’s image of the vehicles will be defined by stories like the Phoenix crash, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies selfdriving vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles with laser, radar and camera sensors and sophisticated computers have been billed as the way to reduce the more than 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the US alone. Ninety-four percent of crashes are caused by human error, the government says.

Autonomous vehicles don’t drive drunk, don’t get sleepy and aren’t easily distracted. But they do have faults.

“We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”

In 2016, the latest year available, more than 6,000 US pedestrians were killed by vehicles.

The federal government has voluntary guidelines for companies that want to test autonomous vehicles, leaving much of the regulation up to states.

Many states, such as Michigan and Arizona, have taken a largely hands-off approach, hoping to gain jobs from the technology, while California and others have taken a harder line.