An Uber self-driving car in autonomous mode struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona on March 18, 2018, marking the first fatal accident involving a fully autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian.
On March 18, 2018, at approximately 10 p.m., an Uber self-driving Volvo XC90 SUV operating in autonomous mode struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a four-lane road in Tempe, Arizona while walking her bicycle. The vehicle was traveling at about 40-44 mph and had a human safety operator, Rafaela Vasquez, behind the wheel. According to the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, the vehicle's sensors detected Herzberg about six seconds before impact but initially misclassified her as an unknown object, then a vehicle, and finally a bicycle. The system determined emergency braking was needed 1.3 seconds before impact, but Uber had disabled the vehicle's automatic emergency braking system to prevent erratic behavior during testing. Police investigation revealed that Vasquez was streaming 'The Voice' on her phone via Hulu for 42 minutes leading up to the crash and was looking down for 5.3 seconds immediately before impact. The crash was deemed 'entirely avoidable' by police if the safety driver had been paying attention. This incident marked the first known fatality from an autonomous vehicle accident on a public road and led to Uber suspending its self-driving car operations across multiple cities.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed