米uberの自動運転車が19日、49 才の歩行者を死亡させる事故は現地で大きく報じられている。
クルマはvolvo製で40マイルで走行中でブレーキをかけた形跡は見られない。現地のCNBCの映像で見る限り被害者は自転車に関係していると見られる。事故により同社は、北米4ヶ所(サンフランシスコ、フェニックス、ピッツバーグ、トロント)での自動運転の実験を中止した。また、トヨタも実験中止を発表した。

Weekly Brief: Uber death throws autonomous testing into doubt
Posted Mon, 2018 - 03 - 26
http://analysis.tu-auto.com/autonomous-car/weekly-brief-uber-death-throws-autonomous-testing-doubt?NL=TU-001&Issue=TU-001_20180326_TU-001_792&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b

An Uber self-driving car driving in autonomous mode struck a 49-year-old homeless woman walking a bike across a road late at night in Tempe, Arizona, last week. The car's dashcam video recording shows the woman's appearance was abrupt albeit she had crossed the outside lanes without incident and was making for the pedestrian pavement. Yet despite the car's much-lauded sensor technology, it did not pick this comparatively large human and metal object crossing the carriageways from the left and showed not the slightest sign of slowing down from its cruising speed of 40mph. The safety driver behind the wheel took no action to avoid the collision and footage from inside the car also shows that the driver was distracted and looking down at his lap rather than at the road at the time. The woman was killed upon impact, making her the first pedestrian victim in self-driving car history.

A team from the National Highway Traffic Safety Institute (NHTSA) is on the ground investigating the incident further. Uber has suspended its entire self-driving programme, which had already been showing signs of problems. Waymo boasts that its test cars in California travel an average of nearly 5,600 miles in between driver interventions; Uber couldn't even hit its stated goal of 13 miles in between driver interventions in Arizona.

Waymo's CEO John Krafcik claimed that Waymo's self-driving system would have detected the woman and avoided a collision. The company that designed the sensors on the Uber vehicle, Velodyne, said that it was "baffled" by the accident, noting that its sensors can see in the dark.

Being baffled doesn't cut it when thousands of self-driving cars are now moving around public roads and Waymo is set to deploy a fully autonomous robo-taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, in the coming months. Perhaps Waymo doesn't deserve to take the heat for Uber's accident but suffice to say that the whole industry is bound to come under heightened scrutiny in the next few weeks and months. Safety advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has called for a moratorium on the testing of all self-driving cars until we know more. Toyota is the only company to comply so far.