A few minutes before the car accident, Vasquez was watching the show on the phone, which violated Uber’s policy prohibiting the use of mobile phones.
Editor’s note: This article is from “Netease Technology”, edit: Little.
On November 21st, according to foreign media reports, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced on Wednesday the results of a Uber fatal car accident in 2018 in Tempe, Arizona, and found that it was a human error. To, and may happen again.
When the NTSB announced its findings on the possible causes of the Tempe crash, the first person to be accused was Rafaela Vasquez, the safety driver in the car at the time of the accident.
A few minutes before the car accident, Vasquez was watching the show on the phone, which violated Uber’s policy prohibiting the use of mobile phones.
In fact, the investigators determined that more than one-third of the time when Vasx stayed in the car before the car accident, was always looking down at the phone. Vasquez failed to “monitor the driving environment and the operation of the autonomous driving system, and was distracted by the mobile phone throughout the travel process”, which is considered to be the main cause of the accident. The car accident led to the death of Elaine Herzberg.
But the NTSB said that Vasquez should share responsibility with employer Uber, and the latter’s lack of attention to safety is one of the reasons for Herzberg’s death. Similarly, the US federal government should also assume responsibility for failing to better regulate the operation of self-driving cars.
The NTSB recommends that if operators want to test their autonomous vehicles on public roads, they should be required to submit a safety assessment report and a continuous assessment process to determine if the operator is adhering to its safety objectives.
The cover image is from pexels