Federal Investigators Say Uber Chose to Disable Emergency Braking System Before Fatal Arizona Pedestrian Accident

The automated emergency braking system on an Uber robot test car was disabled when the vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, back in March, federal investigators said. According to a Los Angeles Times report, the car’s sensor system operated normally, and a test driver was behind the wheel.

But National Transportation Safety Board investigators said neither the human driver nor the computer system braked the car before the collision. This preliminary finding by the NTSB raises serious questions about driverless technology as automakers and tech companies deploy more of these vehicles on our roadways.

Not Ready for Primetime

The NTSB’s report said the brakes were not applied before the fatal crash because Uber had disabled the system, expecting the test driver to take control if something went wrong. The vehicle’s dashcam video showed the driver applying the brakes only after the woman had been struck at 39 mph. The woman, 49-year-old Elaine Hertzberg, was walking across the street pushing a bicycle. Officials said an attentive driver would have noticed her on the roadway, but a driverless car apparently did not.

This failure to brake for a pedestrian further proves that driverless technology still has a long way to go. In the case of this Uber driverless vehicle, the system first identified the woman as a vehicle and later as a bicycle, but not as a pedestrian. Driverless systems make calls on direction and speed based on whether an object is a car, pedestrian, bicycle or something else.

Glitches Should Be Ironed Out

This fatal pedestrian accident further underscores the need for more accurate classifications for vehicles or robots to correctly judge in real-world scenarios. Uber has shut down its driverless car programs in Arizona and paused similar programs in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Toronto.

However, it plans to continue operations soon, and it is unclear how many of these serious safety issues the company has addressed before deciding to put its driverless cars back on the road. Uber is not the only one in trouble. Tesla is amid numerous accident investigations involving its semi-autonomous Autopilot feature.

Our Southern California auto defect lawyers are all for groundbreaking technology. However, these cars should not be tested on a public roadway until these basic glitches have been ironed out. A driverless car that cannot clearly distinguish between a stationary object, a vehicle, and a human being should not be out on a public roadway. It’s simply not ready to be there. Human lives are a very steep and unacceptable price to pay to this new technology.