The crash involved a Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicle that Uber was using to test self-driving technology. The fatal accident was a setback from which the company has yet to recover; its autonomous vehicle testing remains dramatically reduced.
The driver looked up a half-second before hitting Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died from her injuries. FILE PHOTO: Traffic passes an intersection just north of the location where a woman pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber self-driving sport utility vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, U.S., March 19, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Scuteri/File Photo.
Uber in December filed confidentially for an initial public offering and is expected to seek a valuation of up to $120 billion. Its self-driving program, which costs hundreds of millions of dollars and does not generate revenue yet, is likely to come under scrutiny by investors.
In March 2018, authorities in Arizona suspended Uber’s ability to test its self-driving cars. Uber also voluntarily halted its entire autonomous car testing program and left Arizona. In December, Uber resumed limited self-driving car testing in Pittsburgh, restricting the cars to a small loop they can drive only in good weather.
Vasquez, the Uber back-up driver, could face charges of vehicular manslaughter, according to a police report in June. Vasquez has not previously commented and could not immediately be reached on Tuesday.
The Yavapai County Attorney said in a letter made public that there was “no basis for criminal liability” for Uber, but that the back-up driver, Rafaela Vasquez, should be referred to the Tempe police for additional investigation.
Uber not criminally liable in fatal 2018 Arizona self-driving crash: prosecutors. (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc is not criminally li able in a March 2018 crash in Tempe, Arizona, in which one of the company’s self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian, prosecutors said on Tuesday. The Yavapai County Attorney said in a letter made public ...
Prosecutors in Maricopa County, Arizona, Tuesday said the driver, Rafaela Vasquez, has been indicted for criminal negligence.
Vasquez was behind the wheel of a car and allegedly watching her cell phone instead of the darkened road in front of her when the car struck and killed a woman named Elaine Herzberg. People know about distracted driving. “That’s a simple story, that her negligence was the cause of [Herzberg’s] death,” says Ryan Calo, ...
When the vehicle first “saw” Herzberg, 5.6 seconds before impact, it classified her as a vehicle.
Authorities charged the vehicle's "safety driver" with criminal negligence, but not the company that developed the technology. Save this story for later. After the crash, Uber changed its policy to require two safety drivers in every vehicle. Photograph: Natalie Behring/Bloomberg/Getty Images.
According to the NTSB investigation, Uber’s software system did not consider the possibility of pedestrians walking across roads outside of crosswalks, or the possibility of a person pushing a bicycle while on foot.
It has, in other words, been difficult—though not impossible —for the legal system to hold people responsible for the technology they build. Instead, the human in the loop, the person behind the wheel or the screen, has borne the bulk of the responsibility.
Uber reached a quick legal settlement with Herzberg’s family just over a week after the crash, the terms of which have not been disclosed . There’s a reason that outcome may feel unsatisfying, says Calo, the law professor. In a civil lawsuit, Uber faced “the woman who was killed and her descendants,” he says. “But in a criminal case, the other side ...
The back-up driver of an Uber self-driving car that killed a pedestrian has been charged with negligent homicide. Elaine Herzberg, aged 49, was hit by the car as she wheeled a bicycle across the road in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018. Investigators said the car's safety driver, Rafael Vasquez, had been streaming an episode of the television show The Voice ...
The NTSB report said that Uber's "inadequate safety risk assessment procedures" and "ineffective oversight of vehicle operators" were contributing factors. It accused the company of having an "inadequate safety culture".
Ms Vasquez was charged on 27 August, and made her first appearance in court on 15 September. The trial is now set for February next year. In May 2018, when Elaine Herzberg was killed, confidence in autonomous vehicle technology was at an all-time high.
Not only did Uber have to halt its testing programme for a while, but rivals such as Google's Waymo became notably more cautious in their trials. Only today it is being reported that the Chinese tech giant Baidu is pushing back the full rollout of its robo-taxis until 2025, partly because of confusion about regulations.
Following the crash, authorities in Arizona suspended Uber's ability to test self-driving cars on the state's public roads, and Uber ended its tests in the state.
Ms Vasquez pleaded not guilty, and was released to await trial. Uber will not face criminal charges, after a decision last year that there was "no basis for criminal liability" for the corporation. The accident was the first death on record involving a self-driving car, and resulted in Uber ending its testing of the technology in Arizona.
Everyone from Elon Musk to the British Chancellor Philip Hammond was telling us that robo-taxis and other autonomous vehicles would be on the roads within a couple of years, cutting congestion and delivering a big boost to road safety. But the accident in Arizona punctured that confidence.
Elaine Herzberg , 49, was walking a bicycle across the road at night when she was fatally struck by a Volvo SUV outfitted with an Uber self-driving system in March 2018. The car had a human operator behind the wheel but was in computer control mode at the time of the crash.
Police In Arizona Release Dashcam Video Of Fatal Crash Involving Self-Driving Car. The Arizona Republic has reported that the driver, 44-year-old Rafaela Vasquez, was streaming the television show The Voice in the vehicle in the minutes before the crash.
Uber, which declined to comment for this story, could still be sued in civil court and be forced to pay damages. The government could also potentially pursue criminal charges against managers or employees of Uber.
Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor whose research focuses on automated driving systems, suggests not reading too much into the prosecutor's letter. "It's not necessarily exculpatory — it doesn't exonerate Uber or put the company's conduct then or now beyond criticism," he writes in an email to NPR.
A Yavapai County prosecutor found that Uber is not criminally liable for the crash.
An Arizona prosecutor has determined that Uber is not criminally liable in the death of a Tempe woman who was struck by a self-driving test car last year.
Herzberg's family reached a settlement with the company shortly after the crash. Her husband and daughter have also sued the city of Tempe, alleging that a brick pathway that crosses the landscaping was designed for people to cross at the accident site, the Republic reports. The city has since torn out the pathway.
Image: ABC 15. Federal investigators split the blame for the fatal Uber self-driving crash between the ride-hailing company, the safety driver in the vehicle, the victim, and the state of Arizona in a blistering official report that also took the federal government to task for failing to properly regulate the industry.
Police had determined that Vasquez was streaming The Voice on her smartphone at the time of the crash. NTSB investigators confirmed that she spent 34 percent of her time in the Uber vehicle that night glancing down at her phone, with the final glance taking place six seconds before impact.
The failure of the Uber self-driving vehicle operator, Rafaela Vasquez, to monitor the road and the automated driving system because she was “visually distracted throughout the trip by her personal cell phone.”. Police had determined that Vasquez was streaming The Voice on her smartphone at the time of the crash.
In a hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC on November 19th, the three-member panel heard from a team of investigators who had been sifting through the details of the crash for over a year now.
Earlier this month, the NTSB released a trove of new documents that revealed that Uber did not have a formal safety plan in place at the time of the crash. The board also found that Uber’s autonomous vehicles were not properly programmed to react to pedestrians crossing the street outside of designated crosswalks.
Uber’s inability to address the “automation complacency” of its safety drivers monitoring the automated driving systems. Riding with these vehicles can be very dull, and Uber lacked a system in place to ensure its safety drivers weren’t getting overly complacent. The victim, Elaine Herzberg, was found to have methamphetamines in her system, ...
There were cameras in the vehicle monitoring safety drivers, but there was no oversight to ensure that those drivers weren’t violating the company’s policies prohibiting things like cellphone use. Uber’s inability to address the “automation complacency” of its safety drivers monitoring the automated driving systems.