News of a self-driving Uber pedestrian fatality is fueling concerns over how such a thing could happen, especially since so many have been worrying that driverless cars are just accidents waiting to happen.
Turns out, there aren’t many answers -- other than human behavior is unpredictable.
Uber has hit the brakes on all self-driving car operations in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto while working with law enforcement to establish how the accident occurred, The Guardian reported. Uber is just one of several companies developing driverless cars.
Elaine Herzberg became the first pedestrian known to be killed by a self-driving car after she was struck Sunday while crossing a street with her bike mid-block in Tempe, Arizona by a vehicle in autonomous mode operated by Uber, Vox reported.
The car had a safety driver behind the wheel, but that didn’t stop it from striking the 49-year-old woman while going 40 miles per hour, The Verge reported.
Police said the vehicle showed no signs of slowing before striking Herzberg, who was about 60 yards from the crosswalk when she was knocked down.
“Our investigation did not show at this time that there were significant signs of the vehicle slowing down,” said Tempe's Sgt. Ronald Elcock, CBS News reported.
Elcock said an investigation into a self-driving accident was different from an accident between two human drivers, noting there was going to be “a little more in-depth investigation as to what kind of technology is in that vehicle and what technology was working at the time of the accident.”
The ride-sharing company first began testing self-driving cars in 2016 but temporarily halted vehicles in Arizona last year after one of its cars was involved in a crash.
Sunday’s fatality prompted more debates about the safety of self-driving vehicles on the roads.
John M Simpson, privacy and technology project director with Consumer Watchdog, said the vehicles could not accurately predict human behavior.
“The real problem comes in the interaction between humans and the robot vehicles,” he said, per The Guardian.
Tim Stevens, editor-in-chief of Roadshow by CNET, noted that dealing with the “unpredictable nature of humans is definitely the biggest challenge these autonomous researchers have to face,” CBS News reported.
“It's too early to tell whether or not the technology actually could have prevented the crash,” he added.