The safety driver in an Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018 has been charged with negligent homicide, Arizona officials announced Tuesday.

A grand jury charged Rafaela Vasquez with one count of negligent homicide for allegedly causing the death of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing the street at night in Tempe, Arizona.

Vasquez who was the safety monitor in the self-driving test vehicle that hit Herzberg, failed to brake until it was too late, investigators said.

It’s believed to be the first pedestrian death involving a self-driving vehicle.

The Tempe Police Department found the accident could have been avoided if Vasquez wasn’t distracted watching “The Voice” on her phone.

Prosecutors decided in 2019 that Uber is not criminally liable for the accident and declined to pursue charges against the company, though the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that Uber also “had an inadequate safety culture, exhibited by a lack of risk assessment mechanisms, of oversight of vehicle operators, and of personnel with backgrounds in safety management.”

The crash caused Uber to pull its autonomous vehicle testing from Arizona altogether, and now it tests cars in Pittsburgh. 

NTSB Hearing Blames Humans, Software And Policy For Fatal Uber Robocar Crash – But Mostly Humans
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/11/19/ntsb-hearing-blames-humans-software-and-policy-for-fatal-uber-robocar-crash/

The Uber car that hit and killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Ariz., in March 2018 could not recognize all pedestrians, and was being driven by an operator likely distracted by streaming video, according to documents released by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week.

But while the technical failures and omissions in Uber’s self-driving car program are shocking, the NTSB investigation also highlights safety failures that include the vehicle operator’s lapses, lax corporate governance of the project, and limited public oversight.

A radar on the modified Volvo XC90 SUV first detected Herzberg roughly six seconds before the impact, followed quickly by the car’s laser-ranging lidar. However, the car’s self-driving system did not have the capability to classify an object as a pedestrian unless they were near a crosswalk.

How terrible software design decisions led to Uber’s deadly 2018 crash
NTSB says the system “did not include consideration for jaywalking pedestrians.”
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/11/how-terrible-software-design-decisions-led-to-ubers-deadly-2018-crash/

The fallout from the first autonomous car fatality continues to swirl a year later, as the once high-flying technology faces a “trough of disillusionment.”

After a nine-month hiatus, Uber says, its autonomous vehicles are now safer.