Arizona police released footage Wednesday evening showing an Uber self-driving car striking and killing a woman. The incident, which took place Sunday night in Tempe, Arizona, is believed to be the first known death of a pedestrian caused by an autonomous car.
Though the self-driving car was operating in autonomous mode, the automobile also contained a human driver. From the footage, however, it appears that the driver — identified by Jalopnik as Rafaela Vasquez — repeatedly looked away from the road in the seconds before the car struck the pedestrian, 49-year-old Elaine Hertzberg.A spokesperson for Tempe Police Department declined to comment directly on the footage, but confirmed that it would be considered as part of the police investigation into the incident. Hertzberg appears to have been wheeling a bicycle across the street when she was struck.In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said, “The video is disturbing and heartbreaking to watch, and our thoughts continue to be with Elaine’s loved ones. Our cars remain grounded, and we're assisting local, state and federal authorities in any way we can.”Uber temporarily took its self-driving cars off the road in Tempe, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Toronto, the Wall Street Journal reported.More than 60 cities around the world already have self-driving technology operating in their streets, while dozens more are studying the possibility of doing so. Still, this isn’t the first time that Uber has struggled with its autonomous cars: A self-driving car was involved in a three-vehicle pileup in Tempe in March, leading Uber to pull the cars off the streets while it investigated what happened there.