A US resident was charged with negligent homicide for a fatal accident in an unmanned Uber vehicle. Reported by the Associated Press.
According to the investigation, 46-year-old Rafaela Vasquez, a drone operator, was in the car at the time of the accident, but did not operate it. The prosecutor's office refused to press charges against Uber, because, as shown by cameras in the car, a few seconds before the tragedy, the American woman was looking at the screen of a mobile phone. It is assumed that her inattention was the cause of the accident.
Vasquez pleaded not guilty for the incident. The start of the trial is scheduled for February 11, 2021.
On March 18, 2018, in Tempe, an unmanned Volvo car hit a woman who was crossing the road in the wrong place. Judging by the cameras, the deceased appeared in front of the vehicle unexpectedly. She later died in hospital from her injuries.
According to experts, the computer systems of the car, designed to assess the degree of threat of interference, may have been configured incorrectly. So, the artificial intelligence considered that the pedestrian would not create obstacles for the car, and continued to move.
The incident became the first known case of the death of a pedestrian as a result of an accident involving an unmanned vehicle. Since then, Uber has temporarily stopped testing its self-driving cars in Tempe, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Phoenix and Toronto.
