A fatality has occurred involving a fully autonomous vehicle. This may be the first confirmed death caused directly by an autonomous vehicle. I know that there have been fatalities involving Tesla’s autopilot, but this is not the same thing.
Although it’s very sad for all victims involved, we must not overreact, for autonomous vehicles are still orders of magnitude safer than human driven cars. I’m sure that there will be a lesson learned from this, and adjustments will be made to increase safety. That’s how our data driven future will unfold. Bad things will happen, but after each event, an adjustment will fix the problem.
Image is from Uber.
Are there casualties?
Yes. A pedestrian was killed.
All good points. And the other thing to consider is that while this is certainly sad news, there were far more deaths involved in transitioning from horse and buggy to the automobile, or in conquering flight. Though it doesn't always seem like it, safety in innovation has been improving steadily.
There's a lot of ethics to consider with autonomous vehicles, but the initial police investigation points to the pedestrian being at fault. A sad accident, but probably one that a human driver couldn't have stopped (and there was a human driver behind the wheel).