Self-Driving Uber Car Kills Pedestrian
As we grapple with the inevitable transition to more computerized and driverless cars on the road, the public was given the news that a self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. The 49-year old woman, who was crossing Mill Avenue at its intersection with Curry Road on Sunday night, March 18, 2018, was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber vehicle. It was believed to be the first pedestrian death caused by a self-driving vehicle. The company quickly suspended testing of their driverless vehicles in Tempe as well as in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto, Canada.
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Self-Driving Cars Have Car Accident Rate Five Times Higher than Conventional Cars
The question may not be “are self-driving cars safe” but whether other drivers are ready to be on the road with self-driving cars? A 2015 study from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute found that self-driving test cars had car accident rates five times higher than conventional cars but that they were not at fault in any of them! In almost every case, other drivers crashed into the self-driving cars – causing the accidents – which may indicate that self-driving cars lack the necessary ability to react to the mistakes of other drivers or that the self-driving cars were traveling at unexpectedly slow speeds. No accidents were reported from self-driving cars having a computer malfunction.
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