Uber self-driving vehicle kills pedestrian

First and foremost, very sad when anyone is killed.

Yes, "semi-autonomous" and "autonomous" vehicles, while having some positives, are opening up a Pandora's box of legal liability and other similar type issues. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Because I have to for work, I've been following along with some of these type cases.
 
There was an operator behind the wheel and the woman was crossing outside the crosswalk at night. Just another unfortunate pedestrian accident.
 
There was an operator behind the wheel and the woman was crossing outside the crosswalk at night. Just another unfortunate pedestrian accident.

With one distinct difference....the vehicle was in "autonomous" mode. This is similar to some of the Tesla claims that have arisen recently. When the car can either "fully" drive itself for some period, or partly drive itself with some of the electronic nannies that vehicles have, it's going down completely uncharted waters. The debate of "responsibility" is going to rage pretty hot.
 


Full disclosure I am a proponent of autonomous vehicles and believe they will revolutionize the way we travel, work, and spend a lot of our time. I am sad to hear about any accident, but I do hope it is kept in perspective and testing is allowed to continue.

5,997 pedestrians were killed in 2016. You can’t directly compare that to autonomous accidents because there are few autonomous cars out there and upping the sample might also up the fatalities. However sad one death is, I think autonomous vehicles will show to be much safer though (although not absolutely risk free) than drivers.
 
Full disclosure I am a proponent of autonomous vehicles and believe they will revolutionize the way we travel, work, and spend a lot of our time. I am sad to hear about any accident, but I do hope it is kept in perspective and testing is allowed to continue.

5,997 pedestrians were killed in 2016. You can’t directly compare that to autonomous accidents because there are few autonomous cars out there and upping the sample might also up the fatalities. However sad one death is, I think autonomous vehicles will show to be much safer though (although not absolutely risk free) than drivers.

I'm not sure. I probably would never get one for myself as I enjoy driving, especially during low traffic times.

Also, one thing to keep in mind about these cars, is that they will put an awful lot of people out of work.
 
In a utopian world, autonomous vehicles have the potential to be far safer than human driven ones. However, as long as there is interaction between "autonomous" vehicles, non-autonomous vehicles and humans (pedestrians, bicycles, even motorcycles), it's going to be imperfect...at best. The hurdles that autonomous cars face are monumental.

I'm all for safer cars...being in the auto insurance business, I see tragedy after tragedy. At the same time, no way on earth would I ever give up having the steering wheel in my hands. I love to drive and would never give it up.
 


How sad!

While I really like the idea of self-driving cars, I do think there will be a lot of problems like this because they can't really 'understand' when the other vehicle (or in this case, pedestrian) doesn't follow the rules.

But this also makes sense:

5,997 pedestrians were killed in 2016. You can’t directly compare that to autonomous accidents because there are few autonomous cars out there

They may turn out to be less risky than human error, but I think it's too soon to tell.
 
I'm not sure. I probably would never get one for myself as I enjoy driving, especially during low traffic times.

Also, one thing to keep in mind about these cars, is that they will put an awful lot of people out of work.

I think insurance will likely be the thing that gets people out of their cars. When (I know if) autonomous cars are proven to be exponentially safer, the cost to drive yourself will increase from insurance premiums and at a certain point will become too much for most drivers. I don’t think this is going to happen overnight but I think the switch will happen a lot faster than most people expect (just look what the internet did in 20 years).

Autonomous cars also make the cost of car sharing drop and the ease of use much more convenient- no lost time looking for parking, you’re dropped off at the door and the car is off to grab its next rider, you aren’t responsible for maintenance or parking, the car utilization rate is much higher sharing the ROI of car buying, so I think we’ll get to a point where owning your own car doesn’t make sense for a lot of people. I know this sounds very sci fi minority report but I think we’re going to see incredible changes within 30 years (and just think 30 years ago everyone had a set of encyclopedias, you paid to call long distance, had to buy maps, didn’t have message boards, and bought cassette tapes and vcrs so things do change more rapidly than we realize).
 
Certainly not enough information to blame this on a self-driving car. There have been instances where pedestrians have been struct by vehicles with drivers when the pedestrian simply steps out without looking. Cold very well have been the same case her.
 
Full disclosure I am a proponent of autonomous vehicles and believe they will revolutionize the way we travel, work, and spend a lot of our time. I am sad to hear about any accident, but I do hope it is kept in perspective and testing is allowed to continue.

5,997 pedestrians were killed in 2016. You can’t directly compare that to autonomous accidents because there are few autonomous cars out there and upping the sample might also up the fatalities. However sad one death is, I think autonomous vehicles will show to be much safer though (although not absolutely risk free) than drivers.

Sums it up for me. I want one. Freaky for sure but I have medical issues and having a autonomous vehicle later in life would keep my quality of life.
 
Yes but where would be the sensationalism in that? People thrive on that.

Yes blaming the pedestrian wouldn't sell newspapers... People want sensationalism... Why do you think all of those "reality" shows are a complete train wreck?
 
My last experience with an autonomous vehicle didn't go that well.

I fell asleep and it long hauled me. Then It wouldn't drive when I told it to and ended up trying to run me over.

 
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I think insurance will likely be the thing that gets people out of their cars. When (I know if) autonomous cars are proven to be exponentially safer, the cost to drive yourself will increase from insurance premiums and at a certain point will become too much for most drivers. I don’t think this is going to happen overnight but I think the switch will happen a lot faster than most people expect (just look what the internet did in 20 years).

Autonomous cars also make the cost of car sharing drop and the ease of use much more convenient- no lost time looking for parking, you’re dropped off at the door and the car is off to grab its next rider, you aren’t responsible for maintenance or parking, the car utilization rate is much higher sharing the ROI of car buying, so I think we’ll get to a point where owning your own car doesn’t make sense for a lot of people. I know this sounds very sci fi minority report but I think we’re going to see incredible changes within 30 years (and just think 30 years ago everyone had a set of encyclopedias, you paid to call long distance, had to buy maps, didn’t have message boards, and bought cassette tapes and vcrs so things do change more rapidly than we realize).

On your first point, not necessarily. In fact, maybe not at all. Unless you have an environment where all vehicles are autonomous, there are no pedestrians, etc...basically a 100% isolated system, it will never be as safe as it's envisioned. Having "autonomous" vehicles mixed in with semi-autonomous or fully human controlled vehicles will always create potential for major issues. While it's not impossible to have a 100% isolated autonomous environment, we're so incredibly far from it...and it has a lot of very large roadblocks in front of it. Even in autonomous situations, computers aren't perfect. So many things can still happen...software glitches (how often does an Apple product actually work as designed?), hardware failures, weather damages, etc... All it will do is shift liability focus. I don't see insurance being the driver to getting people off the wheel...at least not in our lifetime.

On your second point, yes, I'd agree. Even without autonomy, our current environment is already starting to change the model of car ownership. Sad, but true, at least IMO.

Wouldn't their responsibility be the same as any other passenger in the car? Zero?
No. That's half of the problem. Cars that have some capacity to pilot themselves today are misunderstood by people. They take it to mean they can sit back and play on their phones. Reality is, even with Tesla, the driver still needs to be at full attention and ready to take over at any time. Unless we get to the 100% isolated environment I mentioned above, this will not change.
 
This all seems insane to me. I get that people are supportive of new tech. But seriously, how could this ever be unleashed? Maybe in a controlled environment where every vehicle is self-driving and everyone knows that every vehicle is self driving. But the risk of this happening again is surely too great for a risk averse society like ours.

I hear she wasn't in a cross walk. But should that be a death sentence? The roads are full of risk, but risk is substantially less when people in vehicles are processing their environment and will slow down or stop for a person with a momentary lapse in judgment.
 
This all seems insane to me. I get that people are supportive of new tech. But seriously, how could this ever be unleashed?

We know for a fact that human drivers are flawed and make too many errors that result in 40,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands serious injuries every year. The self driving cars are not perfect but even today they are probably far superior to human drivers. The question we have to decide as a society is how long we wait before these self driving cars are allowed to be sold? The longer we wait the better the technology will become and accident like the one that happened in Arizona will be less likely, but the number of vehicle deaths will continue to be high. We have a chance to greatly reduce deaths if we roll out these cars faster.
 

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