As you likely already know, last week a ‘driverless’ Uber test vehicle made by Volvo struck and killed 49 year old Elaine Herzberg while she was walking her bike across a road in Tempe, Arizona.
The vehicle was traveling at a rate of speed that guarantees a 60+% fatality rate when striking pedestrians. The Uber’s autonomous vehicle (AV) didn’t swerve, it didn’t brake. The so-called “safety” driver on board wasn’t even watching the road.
The myth that driverless cars will solve the bad driving habits of humans also died last week. What we’ve learned since then has confirmed some of our worst fears about AV’s.
Some of the blame rests solely on Uber. The anti-union, anti-worker company wasn’t using trained test drivers who should be working in pairs, they were using a solo ‘safety’ driver with a proven record of driving unsafely. Some have also speculated the Volvo’s built-in sensor-based autonomous braking system might have spared the woman’s life…had Uber not disabled it.
More alarming is the frequency that ‘safety’ drivers have had to override when an AV glitches, gets confused, and almost has a collision while moving at speed: on average about every 15 minutes.
But maybe most terrifying is that driverless cars will almost never swerve to avoid an impact, instead relying on braking alone.
A super-weird aspect of this crash site is that it occurred at a place where a beautiful brick-paved diagonal walking path was provided across the median, along with a sign instructing people not to use it. This is beyond pedestrian-hostile design; it’s damn-near entrapment. pic.twitter.com/ZaHw9bIIrR
— ???? (@EricPaulDennis) March 20, 2018