First driverless car death
UBER last night suspended testing of its self-driving cars after a woman became the first person to be killed by one of the vehicles.
The victim, named last night as 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg from Tempe, Arizona, was crossing the street at night when she was hit by the 4x4. She died in hospital.
Police said a safety tester was in the driver’s seat when the crash happened, but that the vehicle was in self-driving mode. Although details of what happened are being investigated, the crash is expected to raise serious questions about driverless technology, which many companies are testing in the hope that it will mean safer and more efficient roads.
Uber immediately suspended all testing of self-driving cars in Tempe, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto and said it was co-operating with the investigation.
Driverless cars rely on a system of cameras and sensors to detect other
vehicles, pedestrians and obstacles as they navigate around cities, and it is unclear whether the technology failed to spot or react to the pedestrian.
Uber began a driverless car service in Pittsburgh, Virginia, in 2016 and has been testing in Tempe for the past year. In total it has around 200 driverless vehicles being tested on public roads.
Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, said last night: “We’re thinking of the victim’s family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened.”
The Tempe police department said the woman was walking “outside of the crosswalk” at the time.
The accident comes weeks after officials in California announced regulations to allow robot cars with specific permits to be driven on public roads without a human driver on board from April 2. Previous tests of driverless cars have required a safety driver to be behind the wheel to step in if the vehicle goes off course.
In this country, the Government has laid out plans to make Britain a world leader in driverless cars, aiming to change laws so that the new type of transport makes it on to the roads by 2021.
Ministers are reviewing how laws on insurance and criminal liability should be altered to make way for such vehicles.
A survey this week showed that the British public is becoming increasingly confident about the safety of self-driving cars. The study by Deloitte found that 49 per cent of respondents believe self-driving cars will not be safe, down from 73 per cent last year.