Wow, this is huge: the safety driver who was behind the wheel the night Elaine Herzberg was hit and killed by an Uber self-driving test vehicle is being charged with negligent homicide. Whichever way this case goes, it's going to set an important precedent.
https://twitter.com/Automotive_News/status/1306000728641560576
What makes this case so tough: on the one hand, this safety driver was hired to monitor a development vehicle during testing and ensure its safety... but on the other hand we know that this is an almost impossible task to sustain, and distraction was inevitable.
To flesh out the second half of that: Uber had this safety driver working 10 hours per shift, at night, all alone, with no driver monitoring. There's a good deal of scientific research that suggests this set her up to inevitably fail. More on that here👇
In fact, a lot of the context around this tragic crash suggests that Uber ATG's AV development program was headed toward this kind of disaster. When I wrote about the 10 lessons I took from this incident, I tended to blame Uber more than the driver thedrive.com/tech/27023/10-…
Some best practices for on-road AV testing have emerged since this tragedy: extensive training, camera-based driver monitoring, always test in teams of two, regularly alternate partners, regularly alternate roles. Thus far, these rules have prevented any further fatalities.
This case is especially relevant as Tesla comes closer to releasing "beta" versions of "feature complete Full Self-Driving" that the company says will require driver oversight at first. This puts totally untrained consumers in the role of a safety driver for an in-development AV.
The NTSB investigation really captures the conflict here. It calls the operator's distraction and failure to monitor the "probably cause" but says Uber's lack of risk assessment, driver oversight and "mechanisms for addressing complaceny" contributed [PDF] dms.ntsb.gov/public/62500-6…
One other angle that's worth mentioning in this thread: Herzberg's family has filed a $10m civil suit against the state of AZ and governor Doug Ducey, alleging that their policy of attracting AV testing by reducing regulations contributed to her death. phoenixnewtimes.com/news/claim-duc…
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