Uber doesn’t need any more PR crises, but it has another one. The company’s self-driving Volvo mowed down a woman in Tempe, AZ and killed her. The vehicle had an operator on standby but was driving autonomously at the time. This sparked international news and threw a wrench into the move to driverless vehicles. The PR crisis is not only Uber’s but also Waymo’s and General Motors’ and Ford’s and every other entity working on engineering questions for self-driving vehicles. The fundamental question is why the system didn’t see her pushing her bike along the edge of the road? Since it didn’t register her, what other people and objects can it miss? Is its failure common to other systems and if so, can any of them be declared road-ready? Authorities will be looking closely at the incident, and development of autonomous vehicles might be slowed for months, if not years.
Marston Strategic Communications
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