Who was responsible for the first self-driving car accident?
The self-driving Uber car couldn’t stop even though it detected her 5.6 seconds before the crash.
Do you remember the self-driving Uber crash that killed a person in Tempe, Arizona last year? The results of the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have been delivered and a human is responsible for it.
49-year old Elaine Herzberg was killed in the accident while she was crossing the road with her bicycle.
The self-driving Uber car couldn’t stop even though it detected her 5.6 seconds before the crash. Nor could the self-driving car predict her path, or identify her as a human. The safety driver sitting inside the car, Rafaela Vasquez, couldn't stop the car as she was busy streaming an episode of The Voice on her phone.
The report mentions that she was looking at her phone for over a third of the total time she was in the car. The senior highway accident investigator at the NTSB, Michael Fox, says that at the time of the crash, Uber had no corporate safety plan or guiding document that identified individual employee roles and responsibilities to manage safety. He also mentions that Uber lacked a safety division and a dedicated safety manager responsible for risk assessment and mitigation.
The reason also connects to the appointment of Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, who wanted to cut cost on research and development. This led to the removal of a number of safety drivers from two to one. The investigators suggest that this redundancy could have saved Herzberg’s life.
Other reasons include a lack of restrictive rules as the government didn't want to stifle growth. The voluntary safety guidelines were drafted during Obama's tenure as president. One of the investigators also blamed NHTSA for prioritizing technological advancement over saving lives.
All these points can be a learning point as we continue to test more self-driving cars. The full document can be read here.