Published record from the Registrar of the Uber car that hit pedestrian

23 March 2018

The search for the culprit in the catastrophe was not so simple

A few days ago there was a case that divided the history of the development of unmanned vehicles on before and after: unmanned prototype Uber struck and killed a pedestrian, who died from his injuries. But it seemed that advanced autopilots almost ready to replace the driver.

As with any high-profile incident, the fatal incident caused a lot of controversy in society. Initially, it was known that the 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg (Herzberg Elaine) was crossing the road outside the crosswalk, so de jure it was she who was to blame for his death. This version initially insisted the authorities: police Sergeant campus Tempe (suburb of Phoenix, Arizona) Ronald Elcock (Ronald Elcock) and the head of the Tempe police Sylvia moir (Moyer Silvia).

Can you clarify the situation a record with DVR? A short video seemingly confirms the words of the police: a woman crossed the road in nipaginom place, however, she not only did not make sure of safety, but did not even look around. So by the letter of the law actually turns out that the only culprit is the victim.

But there is another point of view. Autopilot is not the same person. At his disposal not only a simple camera, which replace the eyes, but also the leaders and ultrasonic sensors that scan the surrounding space for 360 degrees around. They had nothing to do with the time of day and lighting: they see by night as well as day. So here we can not say that the car could not see the pedestrian.

In the remainder? Obviously, self-driving car, Uber has not acted as it should have been. And although on the video it is noticeable that the pedestrian at the last moment appears literally out of nowhere, but it's just for us humans. The smart car was supposed to detect man long before his appearance in the lens of the DVR. Moreover, the conditions for this almost perfect: a pedestrian slowly crosses the roadway almost at a right angle, while completely missing other nearby vehicles and people that could distract the attention of the computer.

Engineers still have to find out the cause of the error. Broke lidar? A bug in the software? From a technical point of view, there is no doubt that unmanned machine had to cope with this situation without any problems, but it was a disaster. And here it does not matter that from a legal point of view, the culprit will recognize the pedestrian. Importantly, this tragic case made the right conclusions.