Power and Prediction

14 Thinking Probabilistically

In 2018, an Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. It was the first fatal accident of a car designed for autonomous driving. The car, it was claimed, saw the pedestrian but did not brake. News reports quoted a Princeton University professor saying that it “should be a warning to all companies testing autonomous vehicles to check their systems to make sure they automatically stop when necessary.”¹ On the day of the accident, the Tempe chief of police had a different explanation: “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision based on how she came from the shadows.”²

Did Uber really program its vehicle to kill? Of course not. But it also isn’t right that ...