On November 20th, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released the results of its investigation into the 2018 fatal Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona, which was widely believed to be the world’s first death by a self-driving car.

But rather than slap the cuffs on Uber’s robot car, investigators instead highlighted the many human errors that culminated in the death of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. And they sounded a warning: it could happen again…

When the board read aloud its findings on the probable cause of the crash in Tempe, the first person to be blamed was Rafaela Vasquez, the safety driver in the vehicle at the time of the crash. Vasquez was never called out by name, but her failures as a watchdog for the automated driving system were put on stark display by the NTSB…

Overly restrictive federal regulations at this stage of a rapidly changing technology will very likely cause significantly more harm than good, said Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “Just because Uber and their operator then behaved badly, everybody else should not be penalized,” he said.
More>>