The ridesharing company suspended its autonomous vehicle tests across the US in the wake of the accident.
Arizona governor has since banned Uber from further tests specifically in the state, meaning that it may take some time for the company to get back up and running when it presumably resumes its autonomous trials.
The family’s attorney, Cristina Perez Hesano, told Reuters that “the matter has been resolved” between Uber and the daughter and husband of Elaine Herzberg. The family have said that they will not provide any further comment on the matter, with the law firm representing them not disclosing their names or any of the details of the settlement.
While a lengthy and damaging legal battle has been avoided, the damage that this incident has caused the fledgling driverless car industry could be huge. Given that this is believed to be the first pedestrian death caused by an autonomous vehicle, it was always going to come under intense scrutiny.
Despite such tragic accidents being an inevitability with such technology, and self-driving cars being touted as the much safer option, the lack of human oversight involved will always mean that the cars and their companies are likely to face a negative public backlash in these cases, with fallout for the sector as a whole. Nvidia and Toyota have both pulled their own tests of self-driving vehicles from the roads, while Tesla is having to deal with its own situation of one of their cars crashing into a highway divider.
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