‘Fatal crash with Uber car was caused by software that ignored objects’

The Uber autonomous driving car involved in a fatal accident involving a pedestrian in the US in March may have had software set too much to ignore objects on public roads.

According to two sources who would have been informed about the matter, the autonomously driving Volvo XC90 had software that in fact marked too many objects as false positives, The Information writes. These are objects that the system detects, but which are not seen as a problem for the vehicle. A plastic bag is an example of this.

In the crash in March, a pedestrian with a bicycle was crossing the road. The Uber car detected the pedestrian crossing the road carrying a bicycle, but according to one of the sources, technicians went too far with the sensitivity adjustment to ignore certain objects, causing the car to react too late.

The car was in autonomous mode during the accident and had a human driver who could theoretically intervene, but due to inattention, this did not happen. A few days after the accident, it turned out that Uber’s self-driving cars had been performing less well than intended for months: the human backup drivers had to intervene much more often than expected.