Driverless Uber car kills female pedestrian in first deadly crash

A self-driving car killed a female pedestrian on Monday in what is believed to be the first fatal crash involving an autonomous vehicle.

The victim, named by authorities as Elaine Herzberg, was crossing the street at night time when she was hit by a self-driving Uber 4x4 in the South West city of Tempe, Arizona. The 49-year-old was taken to a local hospital where she died of her injuries.

The incident is the first known death involving a fully autonomous vehicle. Although details of what happened are being investigated by local police, the crash is expected to raise serious questions about driverless technology, which many technology companies are testing in the hope that it will mean safer and more efficient roads.

Uber immediately suspended all testing of self-driving cars in Tempe, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto and said it was co-operating with the investigation.

Police said a safety tester was in the driver’s seat when the crash happened, but that the vehicle was in self-driving mode.

Driverless cars rely on a system of cameras and sensors along with software to detect other vehicles, pedestrians and obstacles as they navigate around cities, and it is unclear whether the technology failed to spot or react to the pedestrian.

Uber began a driverless car service in Pittsburgh in 2016 and has been testing in Tempe for the last year. 

It currently has around 200 autonomous vehicles being tested on public roads. In 2017, it announced the fleet had racked up two million miles in autonomous mode - half of which were achieved in just 100 days.

In November the company announced a partnership with carmakers Volvo where it would buy "tens of thousands" of self-driving vehicles from the Swedish automaker with the aim of deploying them by 2019.

Its chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi tweeted last night:  "We’re thinking of the victim’s family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened."

The Tempe police department said the woman, who will not be identified until her family are informed, was walking "outside of the crosswalk" at the time. 

The accident comes just weeks after officials in California announced new regulations to allow robot cars with specific permits to be driven on public roads without a human driver on board from April 2.

Existing tests of driverless cars require a safety driver to be behind the wheel to step in if the vehicle goes off course.

The Government has laid out plans to make the UK a world leader in driverless cars, aiming to change laws so that the new type of transport makes it onto British roads by 2021.

It is currently reviewing how existing laws such as insurance and criminal liability should be altered to make way for the vehicles. A survey this week showed that the British public is becoming increasingly confident about the safety of self-driving cars. 

The study by Deloitte found that just under half (49 per cent) of respondents believe self-driving cars will not be safe, down from almost three quarters (73 per cent) last year.

An Uber spokesman said: "Our hearts go out to the victim’s family. We are fully co-operating with local authorities in their investigation of this incident.”