Death of Elaine Herzberg

Herzberg was pushing a bicycle across a four-lane road in Tempe, Arizona, United States, when she was struck by an Uber test vehicle, which was operating in self-drive mode with a human safety backup driver sitting in the driving seat.

[12] Herzberg was crossing Mill Avenue (North) from west to east, approximately 360 feet (110 m) south of the intersection with Curry Road, outside the designated pedestrian crosswalk,[13][14] close to the Red Mountain Freeway.

She was pushing a bicycle laden with shopping bags,[2] and had crossed at least two lanes of traffic when she was struck[5] at approximately 9:58 pm MST (UTC−07:00)[13] by a prototype Uber self-driving car based on a Volvo XC90, which was traveling north on Mill.

[13] The county district attorney's office recused itself from the investigation, due to a prior joint partnership with Uber promoting their services as an alternative to driving under the influence of alcohol.

"[37] According to Uber, safety drivers were trained to keep their hands very close to the wheel all the time while driving the vehicle so they were ready to quickly take control if necessary.

[...] it's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway.Tempe police released video on March 21, 2018, showing footage recorded by two onboard cameras: one forward-looking, and one capturing the safety driver's actions.

[5] The Uber operator is responsible for intervening and taking manual control when necessary as well as for monitoring diagnostic messages, which are displayed on a screen in the center console.

[13] After the Uber video was released, journalist Carolyn Said noted the police explanation of Herzberg's path meant she had already crossed two lanes of traffic before she was struck by the autonomous vehicle.

[5] The Marquee Theatre and Tempe Town Lake are west of Mill Avenue, and pedestrians commonly cross mid-street without detouring north to the crosswalk at Curry.

[16] According to reporting by the Phoenix New Times, Mill Avenue contains what appears to be a brick-paved path in the median between the northbound and southbound lanes;[16] however, posted signs prohibit pedestrians from crossing in that location.

The purpose of this brick-paved structure is purely to divert cars from one side to the other if a bridge is closed to traffic, and although it may look like a crosswalk for pedestrians, it is in fact a temporary roadway with vertical curbs and warning signs.

Michael Ramsey, a self-driving car expert with Gartner, characterized the video as showing "a complete failure of the system to recognize an obviously seen person who is visible for quite some distance in the frame.

The paired employees had been splitting duties: one ready to take over if the autonomous system failed, and another to keep an eye on what the computers were detecting.

The recorded telemetry showed the system had detected Herzberg six seconds before the crash, and classified her first as an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and finally as a bicycle, each of which had a different predicted path according to the autonomy logic.

[13] Brad Templeton, who provided consulting for autonomous driving competitor Waymo, noted the car was equipped with advanced sensors, including radar and LiDAR, which would not have been affected by the darkness.

However, manual intervention by the safety drivers was required to avoid a collision with another vehicle on at least one instance with a reporter from The Arizona Republic riding along.

After the crash, police obtained search warrants for Vasquez's cellphones as well as records from the video streaming services Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu.

[47] Tempe police concluded the crash was "entirely avoidable"[48] and faulted Vasquez for her "disregard for assigned job function to intervene in a hazardous situation".

[48][50] Vasquez stated in her post-crash interview with the NTSB that she had been monitoring system messages on the center console, and that she did not use either one of her cell phones until she called 911.

According to the police report, Vasquez should have been able to apply the brakes at least 0.57 seconds sooner, which would have provided Herzberg sufficient time to pass safely in front of the car.

[47] The Maricopa County Attorney's Office recused itself from prosecution over a potential conflict of interest, as it had earlier participated with Uber in a March 2016 campaign against drunk driving.

This raises the possibility that Herzberg's appearing so late in the Uber video could merely be an indication that the camera had insufficient sensitivity or was otherwise poorly calibrated for the environment and setting in which it was operating.

Notably, XO 2018-04 requires the company testing self-driving cars to provide a written statement that "the fully autonomous vehicle will achieve a minimal risk condition" if a failure occurs.

[63] After the collision that killed Herzberg on March 18, 2018, Uber ceased testing self-driving vehicles in all four cities (Tempe, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Toronto) where it had deployed them.

[75] A reporter for The Washington Post compared Herzberg's fate with that of Bridget Driscoll who, in the United Kingdom in 1896, was the first pedestrian to be killed by an automobile.

Herzberg's daughter retained the law firm Bellah Perez,[18] and together with the husband quickly reached an undisclosed settlement on March 28 while local and federal authorities continued their investigation.

[85][86][87] This follows similar changes in attitudes against tolerating drunk driving, starting in the late 1970s through the 1990s,[88][89] and has occurred in concert with a cultural shift towards active lifestyles and multi-modal use of roadways which has been formally adopted by the National Association of City Transportation Officials.