Uber Self-Driving Vehicle Saw Pedestrian 6 Seconds Before Crash

TEMPE, AZ – This is how Elaine Herzberg died.

It's March 18, 2018, around 9:58 p.m., and Herzberg, a 49-year-old woman, starts walking her bicycle across Mill Avenue. She's about 360 feet south of the crosswalk.

To get into the street, she stepped off a brick median, past a sign warning pedestrians to use the crosswalk.

She was wearing dark clothing. Her bicycle did not have side reflectors, though there were front and rear reflectors and she was wearing a headlamp. None of those items helped make her visible to a car that would approach her perpendicularly. (Get Phoenix Patch's real-time news alerts and free morning news letters. Like us on Facebook. Also, download the free Patch iPhone app or free Patch Android app.)

Which is what happened.

As Herzberg crossed Mill Avenue, a 2017 Volvo XC90, which had been outfitted with special technology so that it could participate in Uber's self-driving vehicle testing program, approached her.

Volvo – as a standard practice – equipped the car with several technologies to help protect drivers and pedestrians. These include a collision avoidance function with automatic emergency braking and functions for monitoring driver alertness and road-sign information.

All of those had been disabled by Uber so that they would not interfere with their self-driving functions.

The Uber was driving 43 MPH when it detected an "unknown object" in the road. It then reclassified it as a bicycle with changing expectations about which way the bicycle would move.

Then – 4.7 seconds after first detecting the "unknown object" – the Uber struck and killed Herzberg.

This information is contained in a preliminary report into the crash by the National Transportation Safety Board issued Thursday morning.

While the report does not assign blame – that kind of detail is expected in a final report due sometime next year – it does provide many insights into the crash.

The report comes one day after Uber announced that it was shuttering its self-driving operations in Arizona and laying off about 200 people.

The NTSB found that the woman who was in the car as a backup driver did have two cell phones with her at the time. She told investigators that she had not used either until after the crash when she called 911.

The "driver" also told investigators that while she could be seen on video frequently looking down, it had been so that she could monitor the car's self-driving system interface.

The NTSB says that Tempe officers did not collect a blood sample from the "driver" after determining that she did not show signs of impairment.

Investigators are continuing to look into the driver's cell phones as well as the driver interface and the self-driving system.

The NTSB reports also states that Herzberg was found to have marijuana and methamphetamine in her system.

This story is being updated.

Photo - Uber via Tempe Police. Graphic via NTSB.