Police Release First Video From Inside the Uber Self-Driving Car That Killed a Pedestrian (recode.net)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Three days after an Uber self-driving vehicle fatally crashed into a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., police have released video footage of what the vehicle saw with its cameras moments before running the woman over, and what happened inside the vehicle, where an operator was at the wheel. The video footage does not conclusively show who is at fault. However, it seems to confirm initial reports from the Tempe police that Herzberg appeared suddenly. It also showed the vehicle operator behind the wheel intermittently looking down while the car was driving itself.

Comments

Re:Yeah, it was her fault

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

You're kidding right? It is impossible to tell from that video.

WTF happened to LIDAR and sub millisecond braking reactions? The woman stepped out of a shadow at a point where a human would've struggled to brake hard enough to stop, but a machine should've been able to sense via lidar an object moving ACROSS ANOTHER LANE in a trajectory that would end in front of it fast enough to at least brake enough to turn a death into an injury.

I don't think this is a problem with autonomous cars in general, but a problem with Uber's 'I got mine, fuck everyone else' mentality towards everything. I doubt they're prioritizing pedestrian safety whatsoever.

Re: The Driver was Texting

[AaronW]

The radar and lidar certainly SHOULD have seen the pedestrian and it certainly appears that the driver was NOT paying attention. I also will say that in the video I could see the pedestrian while still a way out where the car should have started braking and it could have avoided killing her. While not nearly as noticeable as they would have been had the bicycle had reflectors on the wheels I could still see it when pausing the video.

The pedestrian should have had reflectors on the bicycle wheels. Just the other night I barely saw a bicyclist crossing the street in front of me at a crosswalk until they were in my lights due to the lack of any reflectors and dark clothing. I don't know what the laws are in Arizona, but where I live bicycles are required to have reflectors, a headlight and a taillight at night.

If the driver were paying a lot more attention to the road than the phone then this also could have been prevented.