(Tempe, AZ) ABC15
The Accident Scene
What we know
- Audio from the very beginning of the video is not present. Q/A is. Tempe Police Briefing
- Video from Uber vehicle has not been released
- Nothing has been said about data from the Uber vehicle — LIDAR / SLAM data track
- LIDAR would not have been affected by low light levels — in fact it would have performed better without solar reflections than in daytime.
- Approximate speed of Vehicle: 40mph
- Vehicle was still in autonomous mode. Driver had NOT taken over.
- At this time there is no evidence that the Uber vehicle slowed down prior to impact
- He has taken effort to say “pedestrian,” not “cyclist.”
- She was in the lane of traffic at the time — this is also shown by the impact point on the Uber vehicle (below)
- There are several angles of video. The video shows the pedestrian approaching the vehicle.
NPR Story on Self-Driving Cars dealing with bicycles
www.npr.org/… Bikes May Have To Talk To Self-Driving Cars For Safety's Sake
"Cars have a very regular pattern with the way they move, whereas when people are riding bicycles they change between either acting like cars on the side of the road," says Rowe, an associate engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University. "They might switch and become pedestrians and go up on the sidewalks. They tend to move in a slightly more erratic way. It's much harder to predict."
My Commentary
Just because something may be difficult to see because of darkness, that is not a suitable argument for a car that is mostly using LIDAR and infrared to see. Don’t assume that a video that seems dark means that 1) a driver couldn’t see the pedestrian, 2) the built-in video cameras (yes CAMERAS) couldn’t see it, especially in infrared, or 3) the LIDAR couldn’t see the pedestrian.
Looking at the aerial image of the area, there would have been a significant amount of time and data locating Ms. Herzberg.