Human Driver Could Have Avoided Fatal Uber Crash, Experts Say (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The pedestrian killed Sunday by a self-driving Uber SUV had crossed at least one open lane of road before being hit, according to a video of the crash that raises new questions about autonomous-vehicle technology. Forensic crash analysts who reviewed the video said a human driver could have responded more quickly to the situation, potentially saving the life of the victim, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. Other experts said Uber's self-driving sensors should have detected the pedestrian as she walked a bicycle across the open road at 10 p.m., despite the dark conditions. Herzberg's death is the first major test of a nascent autonomous vehicle industry that has presented the technology as safer than humans who often get distracted while driving. For human driving in the U.S., there's roughly one death every 86 million miles, while autonomous vehicles have driven no more than 15 to 20 million miles in the country so far, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. "As an ever greater number of autonomous vehicles drive ever an ever greater number of miles, investors must contemplate a legal and ethical landscape that may be difficult to predict," the analysts wrote in a research note following the Sunday collision. "The stock market is likely too aggressive on the pace of adoption."

Comments

This is why I ready /.

[Prien715]

Kudos to everyone in the last story who commented LiDAR being able to see the pedestrian and the crash being totally avoidable. Comments have also been more accurate than the news in the recent Intel and AMD (non-story) about security.

The fact that the highly moderated comments is more accurate almost any news outlet is why I keep coming back. That and I'm *still* looking for Natalie Portman's brand of hot grits.

Re:That's video

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yes, that's why night vision devices use extracted human eyeballs instead of optoelectronic components.