I have the same questions as well. But my best guess is that they probably have permission to drive at non-highway speeds at late nights/early mornings (which is when this accident occurred, at 10 PM).
>The Volvo was travelling at 38 mph, a speed from which it should have been easily able to stop in no more than 60-70 feet. At least it should have been able to steer around Herzberg to the left without hitting her.
As far as why test this, I'm guessing peer pressure(?). Waymo is way ahead in this race and Uber probably doesn't wanna feel left out, maybe?
Once again, all of these are speculations. Let's see what NTSB says in the near future.
I live here and they drive around at all times of the day and don't seem to have any limitations. They've been extremely prevalent and increasing in frequency over the past year. In fact, it's unusual _not_ to see them on my morning commute.
> At least it should have been able to steer around Herzberg to the left without hitting her.
Does the car have immediate 360 degrees perception? A human would have to look in one or two rear view mirrors before steering around a bike, or possibly put himself and others in an even worse situation.
If you're about to hit a pedestrian and your only option is to swerve, then you swerve. What could you possibly see in the rear view mirror that would change your reaction from "I'm gonna try to swerve around that pedestrian" to "I'm gonna run that pedestrian over"? Another car? Then you're going to take your chance and will turn in front of that car! The chance that people will survive the resulting crash are way higher than the survival rate of a pedestrian being hit at highway speeds.
You should always be aware when driving of where your "exits" are. This is not hard to do. Especially at 38 MPH, you can be extremely confident there are no bikes to your left if you have not passed any in the past couple seconds. And, lanes are generally large enough in the US that you can swerve partway into one even if there are cars there.
If everybody is driving in the same speed on all lanes, which is not unlikely on that kind of road, I generally am not confident that I can swerve into another lane _and slam the brakes_ without being hit. If I am hit, the resulting impact speed with the bike could be even worse than if I just slammed the brakes, so I don't think it's really a given.
You also cannot decide in 1 second what would happen if the pedestrian were to freeze, and whether you'd end up hitting him/her even worse by swerving left.
Most people in that situation would just brake, I think.
My first reaction when I watched that video was that my Subaru with EyeSight+RADAR would have stopped/swerved. Even the news articles state something similar (from this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/03/21/uber-c...)
>The Volvo was travelling at 38 mph, a speed from which it should have been easily able to stop in no more than 60-70 feet. At least it should have been able to steer around Herzberg to the left without hitting her.
As far as why test this, I'm guessing peer pressure(?). Waymo is way ahead in this race and Uber probably doesn't wanna feel left out, maybe?
Once again, all of these are speculations. Let's see what NTSB says in the near future.