Car without a driver of Uber: a video shows the fatal accident

AFP

Thursday, march 22, 2018 07:01

UPDATE
Thursday, march 22, 2018 07:04

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On the video taken by the onboard camera in the vehicle without a driver of Uber who has struck and killed a woman passing by, you can hear the exclamation horrified driver’s liabilities just before the impact.

*WARNING, THE FOLLOWING IMAGES MAY OFFEND.

The police of Tempe, Arizona has released a video of the fatal collision that occurred Sunday night between a vehicle autonomous Uber and a pedestrian. The images come from two cameras of the car, one filming the cabin and the other filming the road #AFP pic.twitter.com/OKKqvz2Kgb

— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) march 22, 2018

The driver of the autonomous vehicle is surprised for a few seconds to look towards the ground, then he straightens the head for a moment before the car hits a woman crossing on foot with a bike on Sunday evening in a drive from Tempe, Arizona.

The american police has published the video of the driver’s liability and that of the onboard camera on the vehicle Wednesday.

On the images, from the driver’s seat, only the feet of the bandwidth are first visible in the headlights of the vehicle placed in stand-alone mode on a road with poor lighting.

A second and a half later, it is the impact. The victim, Elaine Herzberg, 49 years old, died at the hospital where she was transferred after the accident.

Following this accident, the us company has suspended its tests of autonomous control that were being carried out to Tempe, San Francisco, Pittsburgh in the United States and Toronto in Canada.

“The video is very disturbing and we break the heart, our thoughts are with the relatives of Elaine,” said Uber in a press release. “Our vehicles are locked, and we provide all possible assistance to local and federal authorities”, adds the company.

The local police said that it had released the video as part of its investigation, to determine all the responsibilities of this accident.

The chief of police of Tempe has, however, estimated on Tuesday that, in a first time, “it appears that Uber is not at fault”, mainly because the victim was crossing outside of crosswalks to be protected.

“It is very clear that it would have been difficult to avoid the collision, regardless of the driving mode, taking into account the way in which she (the victim) out of the shadows directly on the road,” explained the police chief at the daily californian San Francisco Chronicle.