Uber’s investigation into the cause of a fatal collision with a pedestrian alleges software issues caused the vehicle to react too slowly. In March the prototype self-driving vehicle collided with 47-year old Elaine Herzberg as she was crossing the road in Arizona.Since the incident Uber has been carrying out an internal investigation to establish the cause.

The vehicle is said to have not stopped in time, due to adjustments to the technology making it more or less reactive to objects in the vehicles path. These false positives as they are known, include items such as plastic bags or other forms of debris. Companies are able to adjust their technologies to be more or less reactive when the vehicle is travelling on public roads, and typically companies make the vehicles more cautious to avoid any collisions.

According to Uber investigators however, the company decided to adjust the system so it didn’t stop for any potential false positives and because of this change it was unable to react to and avoid the pedestrian in time.

Industry Concerns

Herzberg’s death caused an uproar and raised serious concerns over the safety of Uber’s driverless vehicle fleets. The National Transport Safety Board also launched an investigation into the cause of the fatal collision – which is still ongoing – and Uber halted all its self-driving vehicle tests on public roads. Additionally, the firm hired the former chair of the NTSB, Christopher Hart, to help in their own investigation and to assess the safety protocols.

In a statement, Uber said: “We have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving vehicles program, and we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us on our overall safety culture

“Our review is looking at everything from the safety of our system to our training processes for vehicle operators, and we hope to have more to say soon.”

Typically, companies performing self-driving vehicle tests usually have two safety drivers ready to take back control of the vehicle in the event of a potential collision. However, Uber only had one on this occasion and in video footage released by police services the human driver is seen to be looking down and not at the road, in the last seconds of the video footage the driver looks upward and appears to be shocked – Which is believed to be the moment the collision occurred.