Seem like your making a pretty big assumption that "Human driver would try at least an emergency braking. Even if it’s too late."
Seem like your making a pretty big assumption that "Human driver would try at least an emergency braking. Even if it’s too late."
This failure mode (pedestrian jumping in front of the car) is quite often. I drive 10k miles early and encounter this at least once yearly. Last time it was an elder gentleman who felt off his bicycle on the street from pavement. Time before it was a boy with scooter. It happens often and the scenario is easy to test in closed area.
I'll forgive a human driver for not noticing a pedestrian and reacting in a quarter of a second. But all the marketing videos have trained us to hold an autonomous car to a higher standard. Certainly a lack of lighting isn't an excuse. The car should have known she was there, identified her as a potential hazard, and been prepared to take appropriate action should her course change. Speeding, along with the fact that the car made no attempt to stop before the collision, is a "back to the drawing board" level of failure.
This appears to me to be a suicide.
A good driver will look back at what they did after an accident to see if they could have done anything to prevent it, even if they weren't at fault. Uber need to do exactly the same thing. Fortunately, unlike a human driver, they have significantly more data than an adrenaline-fuelled mind and some grainy dashcam footage to work with.