A self-driving goober SUV struck a
pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. The victim,
49 year-old Elaine Herzberg, was killed. Welcome back to ,hat's Trendingm I'm Shira
Lazar. Be sure to like this video and
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daily. The vehicle was not in service at
the time, but rather was being tested by
Uber, as part of an upcoming program
utilizing self-driving cars. In fact,
there was a human test driver in the car,
44-year-old Raphael Vasquez, though the
2017 Volvo CX90 was in "autonomous mode" at the time. The investigation is still
in its preliminary stages, though it
seems that Vasquez was not at fault. The
vehicle showed no signs of slowing when
it hit Herzberg who was pushing a
bicycle across the street. Police are
saying that the incident may have been
unavoidable even with a human driver. You
know it's easy these days to just say
blame the robots.
Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said:
"It's very clear it would have been
difficult to avoid this collision in any
kind of mode based on how she came from
the shadows right into the roadway. The
driver said it was like a flash, the
person walked out in front of them.
His first alert to the collision was the
sound of the collision." In fact, even
though the investigation is still
ongoing, it seems that the Tempe Police
are putting the blame on the victim. And
we just want to make sure that our
citizens are safe and if there's
availability to do it please use the
crosswalks when you're crossing the
street. Nobody wants to go through this.
We in our department, our investigators,
and I'm sure the family also. Using the
crosswalks will definitely limit that, limit any tragic incidents from happening again.
Author Janette Sadik-Khan isn't having it,
though. She tweeted: "The first non-driver
death of the autonomous age and police
are already blaming the victim. 'Crossing
outside of the crosswalk' was never a
valid excuse for traffic deaths, and it
provides no cover for autonomous
mobility companies." Nevertheless, Uber has
placed self-driving car tests on hold in
Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and
Toronto. And the CEO of Uber tweeted: "Some
incredibly sad news out of Arizona. We're
thinking of the victim's family as we
work with local law enforcement to
understand what happened." And even if the
self-driving car isn't at fault, this is
still a big story because it's the first
time a human pedestrian has been killed
by an autonomous vehicle. And it brings
up a lot of questions because already I
think we don't trust this whole thing.
The only other death associated with
self-driving cars was actually a driver
in an autonomous Tesla in 2016. And based
on new rules recently put into place by
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, Uber could
be held criminally responsible for Herzberg's death. That being said, experts
still believe that self-driving cars are
the future. And it's not just to save
money, it's actually surprisingly for
safety reasons too. According to Civil
Rngineering professor Peter Hancock,
self-driving cars will ultimately be the
safer option. He writes: "The statistics
measuring how many crashes occur are
hard to argue with: More than 90 percent
of car crashes in the U.S. are thought to
involve some form of driver error.
Eliminating this error would, in two
years, save as many people as the country
lost in all of the Vietnam War." But
regardless of how safe it is, a lot of
these companies are now going to have a
tough sell on their hands. According to a
Reuters/Ipsos poll, 67%
of Americans would not feel comfortable
riding in a self-driving car. And in a
much less scientific Twitter poll, 44% said they'd never ride in a
self-driving car, while 29% said
"test it for 10 years first." Nevertheless,
self-driving cars are still coming very
quickly.
Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving rideshare
service, is testing in Arizona and plans
to launch in the state later this year.
I think that self-driving cars are gonna
happen, I mean I've seen them at CES and
all the other conventions and
conferences where it's literally like a
living room where you can hang out and
do your work and go on a date. It's
pretty cool.
And I do think probably machines and
robots are safer than humans. I mean,
between our texting and doing other
stuff like I don't know how reliable we
are, but I do think we're gonna have a
lot of kinks to work out to get it to a
place where we all feel comfortable. Would
I just jump in right now and be like yeah
I'm gonna just take a nap probably not.
By the time I have kids I'm I probably
think they're gonna live a life where
like self-driving cars are the thing. You
know my parents didn't have cell phones
and social media and that's gonna be
like the thing for my kids like they're
gonna have self-driving cars perhaps. So
would you ever be driven in a
self-driving car? Let us know in the
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