Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Arizona Pedestrian

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A woman crossing Mill Avenue at its intersection with Curry Road in Tempe, Ariz. on Monday. A pedestrian was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber vehicle at the intersection a night earlier.CreditCaitlin O'Hara for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — A woman in Tempe, Ariz., has died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber, in what appears to be the first known death of a pedestrian struck by an autonomous vehicle on a public road.

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The Uber vehicle was in autonomous mode with a human safety driver at the wheel when it struck the woman, who was crossing the street outside of a crosswalk, the Tempe police said in a statement. The episode happened on Sunday around 10 p.m. The woman was not publicly identified.

Uber said it had suspended testing of its self-driving cars in Tempe, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

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“Our hearts go out to the victim’s family. We are fully cooperating with local authorities in their investigation of this incident,” an Uber spokeswoman, Sarah Abboud, said in a statement.

The fatal crash will most likely raise questions about regulations for self-driving cars. Testing of self-driving cars is already underway for vehicles that have a human driver ready to take over if something goes wrong, but states are starting to allow companies to test cars without a person in the driver’s seat. This month, California said that, in April, it would start allowing companies to test autonomous vehicles without anyone behind the wheel.

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Arizona already allows self-driving cars to operate without a driver behind the wheel. Since late last year, Waymo, the self-driving car unit from Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been using cars without a huma...r’s seat to pick up and drop off passengers there. The state has largely taken an accommodating approach, promising that it would help keep the driverless car industry free from regulation. As a result, technology companies have flocked to Arizona to test their self-driving vehicles.

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A self driving Uber car at the scene of a fatal accident in Tempe, Ariz.CreditABC-15, via Associated Press

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/Autonomous cars are expected to ultimately be safer than human drivers, because they don’t get distracted and always observe traffic laws. However, researchers working on the technology have struggled with how to teach the autonomous systems to adjust for unpredictable human driving or behavior.

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An Uber self-driving car was involved in another crash a year ago in Tempe. In that collision, one of Uber’s Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicles was hit when the driver of another car failed to yield, causing the Uber vehicle to roll over onto its side. The car was in self-driving mode with a safety driver behind the wheel, but police said the autonomous vehicle had not been at fault.

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In 2016, a man driving his Tesla using Autopilot, the car company’s self-driving software, died on a state highway in Florida when it crashed into a tractor-trailer that was crossing the road in front of his car. Federal regulators later ruled there were no defects in the system to cause the accident.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a small team of investigators to Arizona to gather information about the Uber crash, said Eric Weiss, an N.T.S.B. spokesman.

I'm not the least bit surprised by this. Saw it coming a mile away. Very sad someone was killed, but I knew this would happen.

Empress said:

I'm not the least bit surprised by this. Saw it coming a mile away. Very sad someone was killed, but I knew this would happen.

have to agree

Empress said:

I'm not the least bit surprised by this. Saw it coming a mile away. Very sad someone was killed, but I knew this would happen.

Said the same thing when I first heard about the driverless cars...

When does it get to the acceptable risk line?


Not one mode of transportation comes with no risk of death so that can't be the line.

morningsong said:

When does it get to the acceptable risk line?


Not one mode of transportation comes with no risk of death so that can't be the line.

When it comes to self-automated transportation, a single death is one too many...

purplethunder3121 said:

morningsong said:

When does it get to the acceptable risk line?


Not one mode of transportation comes with no risk of death so that can't be the line.

When it comes to self-automated transportation, a single death is one too many...

But who hasn't said that about practically every convinence we have?

morningsong said:

purplethunder3121 said:

When it comes to self-automated transportation, a single death is one too many...

But who hasn't said that about practically every convinence we have?

No excuse when it comes to self-automated transportation. What's next self-automated airplanes?

[Edited 3/21/18 17:52pm]

purplethunder3121 said:

morningsong said:

But who hasn't said that about practically every convinence we have?

No excuse when it comes to self-automated transportation. What's next self-automated airplanes?

[Edited 3/21/18 17:52pm]

Uh, oh. Since you mentioned it.



These newer, more efficient models have much lower operating costs, but the downside is that pilots, increasingly removed from the mechanics of flying, no longer need to be as attentive. On a 2.5 hour domestic flight, autopilots and flight-management systems typically do about 95 percent of the work. For maximum efficiency, autopilots are typically engaged after takeoff, at about one or two thousand feet, and pilots don’t take over again until the plane is lined up on final approach, a few thousand feet above the airport.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/has-the-self-flying-plane-arrived/472005/

purplethunder3121 said:

morningsong said:

When does it get to the acceptable risk line?


Not one mode of transportation comes with no risk of death so that can't be the line.

When it comes to self-automated transportation, a single death is one too many...

i can't agree with that at all. in fact, i think that's an indefensible position. if the technology develops to what the best case prognosis says it could, and driverless car usage means that you'll have only 10% of the accidents we currently have, then you'll be looking at saving 10s of thousands of lives every year, and who knows how many broken bones & head injuries would be prevented. & that's just in the u.s.

i don't think there's any scenario where it's better to have 30 thousand corpses instead of 3 thousand.

you always want to be cautious & evaluate risk carefully, but it's often the case that not using a technology out of a fear or wish to stay with the risk you already know is the biggest risk of all.

[Edited 3/21/18 19:07pm]

morningsong said:

purplethunder3121 said:

No excuse when it comes to self-automated transportation. What's next self-automated airplanes?

[Edited 3/21/18 17:52pm]

Uh, oh. Since you mentioned it.



These newer, more efficient models have much lower operating costs, but the downside is that pilots, increasingly removed from the mechanics of flying, no longer need to be as attentive. On a 2.5 hour domestic flight, autopilots and flight-management systems typically do about 95 percent of the work. For maximum efficiency, autopilots are typically engaged after takeoff, at about one or two thousand feet, and pilots don’t take over again until the plane is lined up on final approach, a few thousand feet above the airport.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/has-the-self-flying-plane-arrived/472005/

A disaster waiting to happen...

damosuzuki said:

purplethunder3121 said:

When it comes to self-automated transportation, a single death is one too many...

i can't agree with that at all. in fact, i think that's an indefensible position. if the technology develops to what the best case prognosis says it could, and driverless car usage means that you'll have only 10% of the accidents we currently have, then you'll be looking at saving 10s of thousands of lives every year, and who knows how many broken bones & head injuries would be prevented. & that's just in the u.s.

i don't think there's any scenario where it's better to have 30 thousand corpses instead of 3 thousand.

you always want to be cautious & evaluate risk carefully, but it's often the case that not using a technology out of a fear or wish to stay with the risk you already know is the biggest risk of all.

[Edited 3/21/18 19:07pm]

A human driver has an excuse for an accident whether good or bad; an automated human-programmed self-driving system that operates on it's own has none at all. And it has no business operating on a road full of VERY HUMAN drivers and pedestrians. And non-humans. A self-programmed train on tracks that don't interact with other vehicles--maybe. Otherwise, no.

purplethunder3121 said:

damosuzuki said:

i can't agree with that at all. in fact, i think that's an indefensible position. if the technology develops to what the best case prognosis says it could, and driverless car usage means that you'll have only 10% of the accidents we currently have, then you'll be looking at saving 10s of thousands of lives every year, and who knows how many broken bones & head injuries would be prevented. & that's just in the u.s.

i don't think there's any scenario where it's better to have 30 thousand corpses instead of 3 thousand.

you always want to be cautious & evaluate risk carefully, but it's often the case that not using a technology out of a fear or wish to stay with the risk you already know is the biggest risk of all.

[Edited 3/21/18 19:07pm]

A human driver has an excuse for an accident whether good or bad; an automated human-programmed self-driving system that operates on it's own has none at all. And it has no business operating on a road full of VERY HUMAN drivers and pedestrians. And non-humans. A self-programmed train on tracks that don't interact with other vehicles--maybe. Otherwise, no.

well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and at minimum we have to wait to see if the tech becomes all that they say it might.

but if it's true that driverless vehicles can reduce traffic fatalities and injuries by some non-trivial number, whether it's 90% or 50% or whatever, then not only do i think we should adopt them as quickly as possible, i think it would be unethical not to. for the simple reason that you'd save lives, prevent paralysis, brain injuries, etc. not to mention the incredible amount of time it would free up for people who would be able to do more constructive things.

the arguments against it all seem to come down to two things as far as i can tell. one, that people just aren't great as assessing risk properly (we're not computers) & we underestimate the good things that can come from a change (you don't notice if a car accident that would have happened otherwise doesn't) and overestimate the impact of lower probability negative outcomes. you don't have to think too hard to come up with other examples: international trade, vaccines, investing.

and two, the fear of driverless cars are rooted in a naturalistic fallacy, that it's better to face a higher risk while using our inferior ape brains instead of using a technology that would reliably reduce human error. same reasoning gets you to believing it's better to die of a disease than to get vaccinated and face some vanishingly small likelihood you'll get a vaccine injury. or it's better to farm naturally than use modern techniques, even though doing that means you'll either produce much less food & people will starve or you'll have to use much more land & you'll have more environmental ruin.

[Edited 3/22/18 4:37am]

Just think, they want self-piloting commercial aircraft.

purplethunder3121 said:

morningsong said:

Uh, oh. Since you mentioned it.



These newer, more efficient models have much lower operating costs, but the downside is that pilots, increasingly removed from the mechanics of flying, no longer need to be as attentive. On a 2.5 hour domestic flight, autopilots and flight-management systems typically do about 95 percent of the work. For maximum efficiency, autopilots are typically engaged after takeoff, at about one or two thousand feet, and pilots don’t take over again until the plane is lined up on final approach, a few thousand feet above the airport.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/has-the-self-flying-plane-arrived/472005/

A disaster waiting to happen...

Don't get me wrong, I've shared the same feelings but I've listened and listened and listened, and I've realized just like the food industry many things have been impledmented long before we the consumer even realizes it's a part of our everyday world. So far nothing has been perfectly ideal. People die on the roads every single day, even up into the hundreds with humans behind the wheel that never make the news yet we drive feeling quite safe because we accept there is a risk and are okay with it, not because it's perfectly safe but because the benefits far outweigh the risk. We live every minute in a state of acceptable risk. Different doesn't automatically translate to dangerous.

The accident video has been released.

Its a tragic situation, and my heart goes out to the woman who was killed, but she appears to have made some bad judgment calls that cost her her life.

Also, the person who was in the SUV should have been paying more attention to the road. The accident happened so fast though, that I'm not sure if she(?) could have done anything to prevent it from happening.


I'm still a advocate of the technology but this recent situation doesn't look good.

[Edited 3/22/18 14:12pm]