Clearly there are still issues with the car. The sensors should have picked up on this. I would be surprised if the automated emergency braking in my Honda wouldn’t have picked this up based on past experience of a close call at night where it saved my ass.
I want to focus a bit though on the human failure here. Uber has been piloting this program with human backup drivers just for situations like this until there is enough confidence in the maturity and safety of these cars.
Whether this driver could have prevented the collision if their eyes were on the road, we will never know. What is clear is the driver was looking down, most likely on their cellphone.
For that there is negligence on both the part of the driver and on the part of Uber. Uber is recording the interior of these cars, so there should have been some type of review process in place to capture this type of behavior from the drivers so it could be addressed.
While I do agree there is a level of responsibility on the driver's part here I will also say that I think it's equally unreasonable to expect someone to stay alert in that situation. Human brains need stimulus and interaction to stay alert focused. To me this is as much a failure of understanding how the human mind functions... not just on Uber's part but of all the companies that think the human will stay alert while the car does the work. Our brains just don't work that way. Once the brain starts to trust the car it disengage and wander off onto other distractions.
I want to focus a bit though on the human failure here. Uber has been piloting this program with human backup drivers just for situations like this until there is enough confidence in the maturity and safety of these cars.
Whether this driver could have prevented the collision if their eyes were on the road, we will never know. What is clear is the driver was looking down, most likely on their cellphone.
For that there is negligence on both the part of the driver and on the part of Uber. Uber is recording the interior of these cars, so there should have been some type of review process in place to capture this type of behavior from the drivers so it could be addressed.