RIDEGURU
The Uber test driver who was responsible for monitoring one of the company's self-driving cars that hit and killed a pedestrian in 2018 was charged with negligent homicide this week.
Rafaela Vasquez was watching television on her smartphone when the Uber self-driving vehicle struck Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, according to a National Transportation Safety Board investigation. It was the first fatality involving a fully autonomous vehicle.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/18/cars/uber-vasquez-charged/index.html
Comments
Does this absolve Uber of liability and fault? Well, probably not as an employer but what about it’s technology?
I don’t know much about law but this seems to mean that the technology or the process would have saved this bicyclist.
The Uber employee was being paid to observe everything and make sure the automobile was being operated in a safe and legal fashion. Apparently watching TV and not paying attention took precedent and as a result, an innocent pedestrian was killed. While I don't know the details (perhaps the pedestrian dashed in front of the car) it would appear to me that the driver may well have placed themselves in a perilous legal situation that resulted in the death of another human. I surely wouldn't want to be in their shoes!
Can’t Uber’s crappy technology be blamed for this?
How do we know the car was supposed to have avoided the pedestrian, and that the expectation to this tester’s was that the car was to avoid her.
Also, doesn’t the liability still fall on Uber as it was their employee who caused the death?
Why didn’t the Uber car beep to warn the human driver?
This person was obviously in the wrong but I do feel bad. I am sure she had done these test drives a bunch of times before and they were boring so she got comfortable on the job and started playing on her phone more and more. But this is negligence.
Imagine how much she regrets that one night. Her life is a mess now all because she decided to watch a show (stupid decision!) during a boring test drive. Always amazes me how fast a persons life can change.
How come I always thought the driver from this incident was a male?