Arizona sought self-driving test cars
have been billed as the way to reduce the more than 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the U.S. alone. Ninetyfour 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 U.S. 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.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey used largely hands-off regulations to entice Uber to the state after the company had a shaky rollout of test cars in San Francisco.
Hundreds of vehicles with automated driving systems have been on Arizona's roads.
Ducey's office expressed sympathy for Herzberg's family and said safety is the top priority.
The crash in Arizona isn't the first involving an Uber autonomous test vehicle. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe.
No serious injuries were reported, and the driver of the other car was cited for a violation.
Herzberg's death is the first involving an autonomous test vehicle but not the first in a car with some self-driving features.
The driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in 2016 when his car, operating on its Autopilot system, crashed into a tractor-trailer in Florida.
The NTSB said that driver inattention was to blame but that design limitations with the system played a major role in the crash.