Self-driving cars turn fatal
Officials, others react to fatal crash
DETROIT — The deadly collision between an Uber autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian near Phoenix is bringing calls for tougher self-driving regulations.
Police in Tempe, Arizona, say the female pedestrian walked in front of the Uber SUV in the dark of night, and neither the automated system nor the human backup driver stopped in time. Local authorities haven’t determined fault.
Current federal regulations have few requirements specifically for self-driving vehicles, leaving it for states to handle. Many, such as Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, cede key decisions to companies as they compete for investment that will come with the technology.
Many federal and state officials argue regulations don’t go far enough.
Safety advocates and others say companies are moving too quick- ly, and they fear others will die as road testing finds gaps that automated systems can’t handle.
Jason Levine, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said without proper regulations, more crashes will happen. “There’s no guardrails on the technology, when it’s being tested, without any sense of how safe it is before you put it on the road,” he said.
Others say that the laser and radar sensors on the SUV involved in the Tempe accident should have spotted Herzberg and braked or swerved to avoid her. Development should be slowed, with standards set for how far sensors must see and how quickly vehicles should react, they said.
Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst for Navigant Research, expects the Arizona crash to slow research. “Responsible companies will take this opportunity to go back and look at their test procedures,” he said.
Toyota already is taking a step back, pausing its fully autonomous testing with human backups for a few days to let drivers process the Arizona crash and “help them do their jobs with less concern,” the company said.
Without standards for software coding quality and cyber security, there will be more deaths as autonomous vehicles are tested on public roads, said Lee McKnight, associate professor of information studies at Syracuse University.
“We can say eventually they’ll learn not to kill us,” McKnight said. “In the meantime they will be killing more people.”