Uber Autonomous Car killed a pedestrian in Arizona

KUALA LUMPUR: A woman got killed when an autonomous car operated by Uber Technologies crashed into her. The incident took place in Tempe, Arizona, USA, on the morning of March 18, 2018.

The Tempe, Arizona Police reported there was an operator behind the wheel but the car was self-driving when it hit the woman. The woman was crossing the road, steering her bicycle when the car struck her.

The Tempe Police said, “A female walking outside of the crosswalk crossed the road from west to east when she was struck by the Uber vehicle”.

The woman, Elaine Herzberg, aged 49, later died in hospital from her injuries. Authorities have identified the woman believed to be the first pedestrian killed by a self-driving car.

Uber announced that it would suspend its self-driving car tests which began in 2016 without any major incident, until now. The California-based company made a statement on Twitter, saying that it is “fully cooperating” with the police investigation into this death and has expressed condolences to the family of the victim.

Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took it to twitter and said, “We’re thinking of the victim’s family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened”.

Although, there have been accidents involving autonomous vehicles including Google’s self-driving car in 2016 but no incident has yet been reported which involved the death of another human being.

The accident seemed all but certain to renew fears that safety hazards remain as companies scramble to scale up autonomous driving technology.