Self-driving Uber car kills pedestrian

I love the *idea* of driverless cars. The improved traffic flow alone could be a huge boon as opposed to tpeople who are on their phones or otherwise distracted. Road rage could be lowered significantly...unless maybe someone sets their car to 'overly aggressive driving'

But yes, I am absolutely wary at this point. I've no desire to own one until those first-adopters get all the bugs worked out.

One downside will be, of course 'drivers' will be even more distracted. The biggest reason I'm focused when driving is cause I just have to be. Any distraction can immediately be an accident. But put my car on auto-pilot? Maybe I'll be alert at first but within a few accident-free months, I'll be checking the phone, dozing off, eating a sub...

Legibly speaking, someone is always at fault... A human driver is expected to look in all directions that could reasonably have impact and not be reading a newspaper or talking on a mobile phone i.e, they would be charged!

If I build a powerful machine that can kill people and don't erect barrages with warning signs to stop people coming near it then when some homeless person wonders into the area and is killed, I am legibly at fault ... The law says that at the end of the day, whom ever allowed that machine on the road is at fault and the police are selling bs in that statement

I am no fan of either Uber or self-driving cars, but there may be more to this incident -- it may not be the driver's (car's) fault. See the article below:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Tempe-police-chief-says-early-probe-12765481.php

It starts with...

Pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags, a woman abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic and was struck by a self-driving Uber operating in autonomous mode.

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” said Sylvia Moir, police chief in Tempe, Ariz., the location for the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

Elsewhere that same Police Chief has been quoted as saying that the accident may have been unavoidable "no matter what mode the vehicle was in." They will be reviewing the camera footage from the car and checking for any other witnesses, or footage from other security cameras in the area that they can find.

I guess what I am saying is; though I am no fan of self-driving technology -- not as it currently exists -- let us wait to judge until all the facts are in.

--OB