“The driver present in the Uber crash was busy with smartphone parts of the ride”

The driver who was in the Uber self-driving car when the fatal collision with a person occurred was on her phone for part of the ride. This is according to a police report that various media have seen.

TechCrunch quotes from the report that the driver’s eyes were not on the road for a third of the 43-minute drive. The police would further conclude that the accident could have been avoided if the driver had paid attention to the road. Reuters reports that police requested data from the streaming service Hulu, which would indicate that the driver was watching a program and stopped watching it around the time of the collision. The driver is said to have returned her eyes to the road half a second before the crash. It is unclear whether there will be criminal charges.

The collision occurred on March 18 and the Uber vehicle was placed in self-driving mode. A human driver must still be present for safety purposes. Earlier it appeared that Uber had turned off the emergency brake of the car to prevent ‘erratic behaviour’. The driver is expected to intervene in an emergency, but does not receive any notification. A 49-year-old woman was killed in the accident as she crossed the road in the dark in a place where there was no transition. The state of Arizona, where the accident happened, banned further Uber testing.