RE: Negligent homicide16 Sep 2020 15:49
I think that Rory Cellan-Jones' analysis hits the nail on the head: -
'In May 2018, when Elaine Herzberg was killed, confidence in autonomous vehicle technology was at an all-time high.
Everyone from Elon Musk to the British Chancellor Philip Hammond was telling us that robo-taxis and other autonomous vehicles would be on the roads within a couple of years, cutting congestion and delivering a big boost to road safety.
But the accident in Arizona punctured that confidence.
It showed that however smart the machine learning in the autonomous systems, mixing robots with humans as cars made the journey towards full autonomy was going to prove a real challenge.
Not only did Uber have to halt its testing programme for a while, but rivals such as Google's Waymo became notably more cautious in their trials. Only today it is being reported that the Chinese tech giant Baidu is pushing back the full rollout of its robo-taxis until 2025, partly because of confusion about regulations.
As long as "self-driving" cars still need a human safety driver behind the wheel, there will be confusion about whose fault it is when something goes wrong - but going fully autonomous is such a huge leap that even the boldest tech firm is likely to be very cautious about going first.'