Uber’s autonomous software was to blame for fatal crash, report finds
Shortly after saying the ride-hailing company was not at fault, video released by police showed Uber’s human backup driver with their head down until the moment they realized the vehicle they were behind the wheel of was about to strike someone. That includes some potentially concerning facts about how Uber’s system interacted with the Volvo’s own safety features, and how warnings were issued to the human operator.
Investigators examine a self-driving Uber vehicle involved in a fatal accident in Tempe, Arizona.
But Uber has irked Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto (D), an enthusiastic early Uber supporter who is now emphasizing concerns about safety. “Instead of fixing the spoofing, they fixed the spoofing by turning it off”.
And the car’s human operator took control a second before impact but did not hit the brake until just after. The report did not, however, explain why the vehicle still proceeded along its intended path, crashing into Herzberg. “In the best interests of the people of my state, I have directed the Arizona Department of Transportation to suspend Uber’s ability to test and operate autonomous vehicles on Arizona’s public roadways”.
According to the new NTSB report, the Uber vehicle contained a “developmental self-driving system” consisting of radar, lidar, navigation sensors, a computer, and 10 cameras.
An internal email from Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber’s self-driving auto operations, leaked Wednesday revealed that the company plans to resume its autonomous vehicle tests in Pittsburgh this summer .
On Wednesday, Uber announced it would cease testing its vehicles in Arizona and would focus on more limited testing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and California.
It wasn’t until 1.3 seconds before impact that the self-driving system had determined that the brakes should be applied to lessen the force of the imminent impact.
The report, however, showed LiDAR did spot her about six seconds before the impact, when the vehicle was driving at 43 miles per hour. The driver wasn’t tested for drugs or alcohol, but police said she showed no signs of impairment. She also wore dark clothing, rode a bicycle with no side reflectors and was crossing outside a crosswalk. “The report also notes the pedestrian’s post-accident toxicology test results were positive for methamphetamine and marijuana”, the NTSB says.
The Volvo XC90 SUV was pre-equipped with automatic emergency braking, but the function was disabled while the vehicle was in autonomous mode.
The findings from the National Transportation Safety Board have sparked even more discussions as to the role of autonomous cars on the road and the responsibilities of companies in these situations.
“We’re relying on an attentive operator to make decisions here and that’s why we disabled the braking system, but at the same time that operator was required also to be monitoring data which then requires them to be inattentive”, Karam said. A first-generation semi-autonomous Tesla Autopilot system infamously failed to correctly classify a white semi trailer against a bright sky, in the accident that killed Joshua Brown, but the sensors and computational power available to that system – as well as its stated objective and intended use – were entirely different than that of the Uber vehicle.
“The inward-facing video shows the vehicle operator glancing down toward the center of the vehicle several times before the crash”.
The NSTB said that the full investigation would take a year or more to complete, but it yesterday (24 May) released its preliminary report on the incident, showing Uber’s self-driving technology to be unreliable.