On March 19, the first pedestrian death caused by an autonomous vehicle (AV) was recorded.
The woman was killed by a self-driving Uber car early Monday morning in Tempe, Arizona. In response, Uber pulled all of its self-driving cars from public roads in the state as well as in the cities of San Francisco, Toronto and Pittsburgh.
Over the next few days, skeptics of AVs will be saying “we told you so” and others will be demanding that they be taken off the streets for good.
If you’re someone that’s looking forward to this technology, the near future may sound kind of bleak.
Trust me, it’s not the end of the AV. This is especially true when you put it into perspective.
AV vs Non-AV
It’s been 30 years since the first semi-autonomous automobiles hit the streets in very-limited experiments. It’s also been more than 20 years since Navlab 5 made its “no hands across America” trip from Pennsylvania to California. Over the last decade, dozens of AVs have hit the road without a single pedestrian casualty.
Which brings us back to Tempe, where AVs were first put on the road in February…
