Uber’s fatal self-driving crash: all the news and updates

The backup driver in the self-driving Uber vehicle that killed a 49-year-old woman in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018 pled guilty to one count of endangerment and was sentenced to three years’ probation on Friday.

Rafaela Vasquez worked as a safety driver for Uber’s autonomous vehicle test program in Arizona. She was behind the steering wheel when her vehicle ran over Elaine Herzberg, who was pushing a bicycle across the street. The crash, which happened on March 18th, 2018, is believed to be the first fatal collision involving a self-driving car.

The backup safety driver who was behind the wheel when one of Uber’s self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018 has been charged with negligent homicide, the New York Times reports. Rafaela Vasquez, who investigators say was watching an episode of The Voice at the time of the crash, has pleaded not guilty.

The crash, which happened on March 18th, 2018 and resulted in the death of Elaine Herzberg, is believed to be the first fatal collision involving a self-driving car. Investigators have said the car saw Herzberg, but did not automatically stop, and that Vasquez did not brake until it was too late. The case has raised important questions about how to safely test the new technology, and who should be held responsible when something goes wrong.

Federal investigators split the blame for the fatal Uber self-driving crash between the ride-hailing company, the safety driver in the vehicle, the victim, and the state of Arizona in a blistering official report that also took the federal government to task for failing to properly regulate the industry.

In a hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC on November 19th, the three-member panel heard from a team of investigators who had been sifting through the details of the crash for over a year now. At the end of the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, the board issued its determination of probable cause in the event that shook the autonomous vehicle industry.

Uber did not have a formal safety plan in place at the time when one of its self-driving cars killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona, last year, according to a trove of new documents released by the National Traffic Safety Board on Tuesday. Its autonomous vehicles were not programmed to react to people who were jaywalking, and the company had been involved in over three dozen crashes prior to the one that killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in March 2018.

These new details cast a harsh light on Uber’s self-driving vehicle program, which has tentatively restarted testing after shutting down in the wake of the March 18th crash. And they set the stage for a potentially contentious hearing later this month when NTSB will decide the probable causes of the crash.

Who is criminally liable when a self-driving car fatally strikes a pedestrian? Not the company that built and tested the car — at least not when it comes to Uber’s fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona last March, which killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg.

Uber won’t be charged with a crime, according to a letter, first reported on by Quartz, from Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, the prosecutor who was temporarily in charge of the case. “After a very thorough review of all the evidence presented, this Office has determined that there is no basis for criminal liability for the Uber corporation arising from this matter,” reads the document.

Uber officially resumed testing its self-driving cars on public roads Thursday, nine months after one of its vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. The company received a letter from Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation authorizing it to restart its program, albeit in a highly scaled back fashion.

For the time being, Uber’s self-driving Volvo SUVs will be confined to a one-mile loop around Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where the company’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) is headquartered. Only two vehicles are being tested for now, though more will be added. The cars won’t exceed the posted speed limit of 25 mph, and will have two safety drivers in them at all times — Uber calls them “mission specialists.” For now, the cars aren’t picking up any passengers.

Uber has been given the green light by Pennsylvania officials to restart its self-driving car tests on public roads. The program was shut down last March after a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. The crash was the first death attributed to a self-driving car, and it was seen as a significant setback for the industry, which is racing to get autonomous vehicles into commercial use.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation approved Uber’s request to start testing autonomously in Pittsburgh, where its Advanced Technologies Group is headquartered, according to The Information. The news comes a few days after the tech site reported that a former Uber manager sent an 890-word email to some of the company’s executives that raised safety concerns about its autonomous vehicle program just days before the fatal crash in Tempe.

An 890-word email was sent to Uber’s executives that raised safety concerns about the company’s autonomous vehicle program just days before an Uber vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona last March. The email was sent to the head of Uber’s autonomous vehicle division and other top executives and lawyers by a manager in the group. It was made public by The Information, which validated the assertions through interviews with current and former employees. The email complained about near misses that frequently weren’t investigated properly or even ignore, and about backup drivers who lacked proper training and vetting.

The email from Robbie Miller, an operations manager from the autonomous group, raised serious concerns about the backup drivers being placed in control of the vehicles. Miller writes that “poor behavior of the operator” was usually the cause of accidents, and he noted that “several of the drivers appear to not have been properly vetted or trained.” He goes on to recommend that Uber reinstate its policy of having two backup drivers in each vehicle. Days later, on March 18th, a self-driving Uber vehicle was involved in a fatal collision. The backup driver was reportedly streaming The Voice on Hulu on her phone at the time of the crash.

Uber is seeking permission from the state of Pennsylvania to resume testing its self-driving cars on public roads more than seven months after a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona.

The ride-hailing company released its voluntary safety report to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday, becoming the sixth company to do so. In it, Uber commits to resuming testing with two employees in each autonomous vehicle, enabling automatic braking, and strictly monitoring safety drivers. The company said it now has real-time third-party monitoring of backup safety drivers, sets limits on the amount of time drivers can work per day, and has improved training.

Uber’s self-driving cars are back on public roads in Pittsburgh this week, four months after a fatal crash prompted the company to shut down its testing program in North America. For now, the vehicles will not be driven in autonomous mode, but instead will be manually operated by human safety drivers while Uber continues its “top-to-bottom” review of its self-driving program.

The company’s fleet of Volvo XC90 SUVs have been gathering dust since March, when a self-driving Uber car struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg while she was crossing the street in Tempe, Arizona. Uber immediately grounded its fleet as federal investigators began to probe what went wrong. The governor of Arizona barred the company from further testing in his state, and Uber subsequently laid off hundreds of safety drivers in Arizona and Pittsburgh.

Police in Tempe, Arizona, have released a new report regarding Uber’s fatal self-driving car crash last March, which reveals that the safety driver Rafaela Vasquez was streaming The Voice on Hulu on her phone at the time of the accident, via Reuters.

The crash killed 49-year old Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing the street with a bicycle when Uber’s self-driving test car struck her at 39 mph. Why the car failed to avoid her has been the subject of scrutiny from both officials and the wider industry. The Tempe Police Department’s 318-page report of its investigation of the incident found that Vasquez’s Hulu account was watching the show for 42 minutes prior to the crash, right up until the time the accident occurred. According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) timeline of the crash, that means that Vasquez would have started watching her show within minutes of starting the drive.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its preliminary report into the fatal crash involving a self-driving Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, last March. Among the findings, investigators say the vehicle decided it needed to brake 1.3 seconds before striking a pedestrian, but Uber had previously disabled the Volvo’s automatic emergency braking system in order to prevent erratic driving.

The four-page report provides a detailed account of what happened that night on March 18th when an Uber test vehicle slammed into 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, killing her. In some ways, the document is more notable for what it doesn’t say than what it does. The NTSB provides no analysis nor assigns any blame in Herzberg’s death. Much of the report has been previously reported, including the fact that Uber had disabled the Volvo XC90’s factory settings for emergency braking and other driver assist features. And there is no mention of the vehicle’s software being tuned in such a way to register Herzberg as a “false positive,” as recently reported by The Information. To the contrary, the agency said that Uber’s system appeared to be working just fine.

Uber has shuttered its self-driving testing program in Arizona and laid off close to 300 workers there — most of them test drivers, or “vehicle operators” — two months after one of its autonomous cars killed a pedestrian, the company said on Wednesday. The company had been testing its self-driving technology in the state since 2016, but halted operations in the wake of the March crash. The company’s testing was also indefinitely suspended by the Arizona governor’s office.

The crash is still currently being investigated by the Tempe police, as well as the National Transportation Safety Board. Uber reached a settlement with the family of the pedestrian, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, two weeks after the crash.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Wednesday that the company would resume testing its self-driving cars “in a few months.” The ride-hailing company grounded its fleet of autonomous vehicles in the wake of a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, and has since said it was waiting for the release of a preliminary report from federal traffic investigators before restarting the program.

That moment appears to be fast approaching, according to Khosrowshahi. Speaking from the stage of Uber’s second annual Elevate conference in Los Angeles, Khosrowshahi said he expected the company’s autonomous vehicles to be back on the road soon after the release of the National Traffic Safety Board’s report, as well as a “top-to-bottom” internal safety review Uber was conducting at its Advance Technologies Group in Pittsburgh.

Uber has discovered the reason why one of the test cars in its fledgling self-driving car fleet struck and killed a pedestrian earlier this year, according to The Information. While the company believes the car’s suite of sensors spotted 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she crossed the road in front of the modified Volvo XC90 on March 18th, two sources tell the publication that the software was tuned in such a way that it “decided” it didn’t need to take evasive action, and possibly flagged the detection as a “false positive.”

The reason a system would do this, according to the report, is because there are a number of situations where the computers that power an autonomous car might see something it thinks is a human or some other obstacle. Uber reportedly set that threshold so low, though, that the system saw a person crossing the road with a bicycle and determined that immediate evasive action wasn’t necessary. While Uber had an operator, or “safety driver,” in the car who was supposed to be able to take control in a failure like this, the employee was seen glancing down in the moments before the crash in footage released by the Tempe Police Department.

Uber’s self-driving cars do not use Nvidia’s autonomous vehicle computing platform, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang clarified on Wednesday. The computer graphics cards maker continues to distance itself from what is considered the first fatal accident involving a self-driving car.

“Uber develops their own sensing and driving technology,” Huang said during a Q&A session with the press at Nvidia’s annual GPU Technology Conference in San Jose. Uber does use Nvidia’s standard GPU, but it does not use the company’s self-driving vehicle platform. An Uber spokesperson confirmed that it only uses Nvidia’s standard GPUs.

Uber has reached a settlement with the family of Elaine Herzberg, a 49-year-old Tempe woman who was killed by one of the ride-hailing company’s self-driving vehicles on March 18th, according to multiple reports.

The size of the settlement was not immediately known. An attorney for the victim’s family, Christina Perez Hesano, confirmed the settlement to NPR Wednesday night but provided few details. The agreement was reportedly reached with Herzberg’s husband and daughter. A spokesperson for Uber declined to comment.

A co-founder of Otto, the self-driving trucking company acquired by Uber in 2016, has left the company according to CNBC. Lior Ron co-founded Otto (née Ottomotto) with Anthony Levandowski in 2016 shortly before it was acquired by Uber, a move that was at the center of the recent Waymo v. Uber trial. Ron has served as the head of Uber Freight, the company’s trucking arm, since the acquisition. A source familiar with the situation confirmed Ron’s departure to The Verge.

Uber declined to comment on the specifics of Ron’s departure. “We remain fully invested in and excited about the future of Uber Freight,” a spokesperson said via email. “We believe it will continue to grow as we use our network and technology to transform the trucking industry.”

As we wait for the first report from the National Traffic Safety Board on the fatal Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona, new details about the ride-hailing company’s self-driving program continue to trickle out. And as you would expect, it’s more bad news.

Most notably, Uber reduced the number of LIDAR sensors on its vehicles when it shifted from its prototype Ford Fusion sedans to the Volvo XC90 SUVs, Reuters reports. And new emails obtained by The Guardian highlight the chummy relationship between Uber and Arizona governor Doug Ducey — possibly at the expense of public safety.

Uber will not renew its permit to test autonomous vehicles on public roads in California. It’s further evidence that the company is pulling back from its aggressive plans to launch a self-driving service in the wake of a fatal crash in Arizona, which resulted in the death of a pedestrian.

In a letter, the California DMV confirmed that Uber’s authority to test self-driving cars in the state will end March 31st following the decision not to renew its license. A spokesperson for Uber confirmed that it would not seek to continue testing in California in light of the crash in Arizona. Federal investigators are currently probing the cause of the crash.

Nvidia will suspend its autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in the aftermath of Uber’s fatal crash in Arizona, Reuters reports. Uber is a customer of Nvidia’s, using the chipmaker’s computing platform in its fleet of self-driving cars.

Nvidia had been testing its self-driving cars in New Jersey, California, Japan, and Germany. The company is hosting its annual GPU Technology Conference in San Jose this week, where it is expected to make several announcements regarding its automotive products.

Uber has been suspended from testing autonomous vehicles in the state of Arizona following last week’s fatal crash in the city of Tempe, according to the Associated Press. The accident, which occurred at night and coincided with autonomous test driver Rafaela Vasquez looking down right before the moment of impact, left pedestrian 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg dead.

It is likely the first death caused by a self-driving vehicle, and the aftermath of the event has been severe for Uber, with the company immediately suspending self-driving operations in the state amid a US National Transportation Safety Board investigation. The Tempe Police Department is also conducting an investigation, which will eventually be turned over to the Maricopa County Attorney’s office.

All was not well with Uber’s self-driving car project before the fatal crash this past Sunday in Arizona, which has prompted widespread criticism of the ride-hailing giant’s approach to autonomous vehicle development and forced the company to pause much of its operations surrounding the technology. The goal of offering driverless ride-hailing services to the general public by the end of the year was quickly falling apart, and Uber’s self-driving cars had a record of failing to operate correctly under a number of standard road conditions, according to internal company notes obtained by The New York Times.

This included issues that involved operators of the fleet of Volvo XC90s — like the one that killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona on Sunday — to intervene more often than engineers expected, something that seriously threatened to delay the company’s implementation of self-driving technology. Further scrutiny of the problem stems from the video released Wednesday by the Tempe Police Department that shows the Uber operator looking down in the moments before the vehicle hit Herzberg, and whether a second operator in the vehicle may have prevented the incident. According to the The New York Times’ report:

The Tempe Police Department has released the first footage of this week’s fatal crash involving a self-driving Uber. Two angles of the crash — one facing out at the road, and one facing in at the Uber safety driver — were compiled into a 22-second video that was released on the Tempe Police’s Twitter account Wednesday night. In both angles, the footage stops just before the car strikes and kills pedestrian 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg.

In the camera angle that faces inward, the Uber safety driver can be seen looking down for several seconds in the moments before the crash. The driver, 44-year-old Rafaela Vasquez, reportedly told Tempe Police chief Sylvia Moir that “it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” and that “the first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.” Vasquez can be seen looking back up at the road just before the car strikes Herzberg.

“We don’t need redundant brakes & steering, or a fancy new car, we need better software,” then-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski wrote in an email to Larry Page in January 2016. “To get to that better software faster we should deploy the first 1000 cars asap. I don’t understand why we are not doing that. Part of our team seems to be afraid to ship.” Shortly thereafter, Levandowski would leave to found his own self-driving trucking company, which was quickly acquired by Uber.

Anthony Levandowski wasn’t the only Uber employee who took the “move fast and break things” attitude to an alarming place, but many of his comments are now a matter of public record thanks to Waymo v. Uber, the lawsuit filed against the ride-sharing company for Levandowski’s alleged theft of 14,000 documents and the misappropriation of Google trade secrets. Uber fired Levandowski in 2017 and settled the lawsuit in February 2018. Uber has a new CEO who appears to be sincere in his desire to transform the corporate culture created by Travis Kalanick. But the company may be haunted by Levandowski’s legacy for some time, especially in the wake of the self-driving car accident in Tempe, Arizona that left a pedestrian dead.