After the Fatal Uber Self Driving Car pedestrian accident, Uber, and the news was telling us that the pedestrian just walked right in front of the car, no warning, and the pedestrian was not in a crosswalk.
The Police in Arizona were examining the car, and no one had seen the onboard video camera yet.
People started, “victim blaming.”
This is what Janette Sadik-Khan said, she is an inspiring author of the book Streetfight and former NYCDOT Commissioner, “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.”
This is an important lesson in why you should always talk to an experienced, proven, personal injury attorney, even if you are blamed in the DMV Accident report by the responding officers. I had two pedestrian cases last year, both pedestrians were struck in a marked crosswalk. Both pedestrians had the walk sign. Both cases had the same responding police officer who, amazingly, blamed the pedestrian in both cases. In one DMV Accident report, the officer even noted that the driver admitted not seeing the pedestrian, her windshield condensation and hadn’t cleared up, it was dark, and she was turning left through the crosswalk, she didn’t even realize she had hit a person! Fortunately for my clients, there were witnesses and I was able to get both of these pedestrians substantial settlements, even though they were actually blamed.
Will news correct story that pedestrian did not just appear?
Or what about the distracted driving of this human backup driver in the cab?
You can clearly see in the before image that the driver IS NOT LOOKING AT THE RODE.
Can @CSaid and the @sfchronicle update their article now that the footage is out and it shows the victim did not "abruptly" step out from a median? Shows the dangers of reporting a driver's account as if it is fact. #Ubercrash #AV https://t.co/8zJLg8trIX
— Tara Goddard 🚸 (@GoddardTara) March 22, 2018
Before this fatal pedestrian accident occurred, we already knew that self driving cars were having trouble with pedestrians and bicyclists, and bike lanes!
Uber admits to self-driving car ‘problem’ in bike lanes as safety concerns mount
Engineers were working to fix programming flaw that could have deadly results for cyclists days after Uber announced it would openly defy California regulators
Uber began piloting its self-driving vehicles in its home town of San Francisco last week, despite state officials’ declaration that the ride-share company needed special permits to test its technology. On day one, numerous autonomous vehicles – which have a driver in the front seat who can take control – were caught running red lights and committing a range of traffic violations.
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has released a warning about Uber’s cars based on staff members’ first-hand experiences in the vehicles. When the car was in “self-driving” mode, the coalition’s executive director, who tested the car two days before the launch, observed it twice making an “unsafe right-hook-style turn through a bike lane”.
That means the car crossed the bike path at the last minute in a manner that posed a direct threat to cyclists. The maneuver also appears to violate state law, which mandates that a right-turning car merge into the bike lane before making the turn to avoid a crash with a cyclist who is continuing forward.
Furthermore, AI are not good at identifying cyclists nor pedestrians.
The Cyclist Problem
Self-driving cars aren’t good at detecting cyclists. The latest proposed fix is a cop-out.
Autonomous cars have a potentially fatal flaw: They struggle to detect and react to cyclists on the road. According to a January 2017 report by IEEE Spectrum, bicycles are generally considered “the most difficult detection problem that autonomous vehicle systems face.”