Backup driver pleads guilty for first death caused by fully autonomous car

By Alvin Wu
Domestic Affairs
Backup driver pleads guilty for first death caused by fully autonomous car

Approximate position of the pedestrian's bicycle at impact with the Uber Advanced Technologies Group's self-driving car. NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD/Report

Aug. 3 (ZFJ) — Rafaela Vasquez, 49, pled guilty to endangerment on Friday, July 28, for failing to stop a fully self-driving car from hitting and killing a 49-year-old woman.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David W. Garbarino sentenced her to three years of supervised probation. Her charge will be designated a misdemeanor once she completes her sentence.

On March 18, 2018, Vasquez was the backup driver for a test vehicle belonging to Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG).

The vehicle was equipped with an automated driving system (ADS) that was responsible for all driving tasks while active.

The ADS was designed to be fully automated but had a backup driver responsible for intervening in the event of an emergency.

If the operator did not intervene, the ADS was programmed to apply maximum braking if the crash was avoidable braking at 7 m/s2 and decelerating at 5 m/s3. Otherwise, the ADS would only gradually slow down the vehicle.

While completing the second loop of a predetermined test route, the ADS-controlled vehicle collided with a pedestrian impaired by drugs who was pushing a bicycle on N. Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona, outside of a crosswalk.

The ADS detected the woman 5.6 seconds before the collision but failed to properly identify her as a pedestrian or predict her path.

Before the collision, Vasquez was focused on a TV show streaming on her phone, placed on the vehicle’s center console.

As the ADS depended on the backup driver to intervene and the situation exceeded its response parameters, it did not activate emergency braking.

The National Transportation Safety Board found the probable cause of the crash to be “the failure of the vehicle operator to monitor the driving environment and the operation of the automated driving system.”

The NTSB also faulted the Uber ATG’s “inadequate” risk assessment and oversight procedures.

The NTSB added that the pedestrian’s use of perception-impairing drugs and crossing outside of a sidewalk and the Arizona Department of Transportation’s “insufficient oversight of automated vehicle testing” were contributing factors.

After the crash, ATG modified the ADS to apply maximum braking in any emergency situation.

Uber withdrew its self-driving vehicles from Arizona after the crash. Shortly after, Douglas A. Ducey, the state’s governor at the time, ordered the state transportation department to ban further autonomous vehicle testing by Uber on public roads.

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