A 49-year-old woman has died in Tempe, Arizona, after being run over by a vehicle operated by Uber without a driver, according to a local police statement. "The vehicle was heading north when a woman walking outside the crosswalk crossed the road from west to east and was hit by Uber's vehicle," police said in a statement. It is the first fatal hit by an autonomous car.

ABC News: the victim walked with bicycle

Although the police statement says that the woman was walking when being rolled up, images broadcast by Abc News show a bicycle on the ground next to the autonomous car, apparently damaged by Uber's vehicle.

The channel has reported that Uber's car hit a cyclist, identified by the police as Elaine Herzberg. ABC News, citing the police, has specified that the victim "walked with her bicycle" when she crossed the road outside the pedestrian crossing and was hit.

Uber has announced that it has suspended the tests that it was carrying out with cars without a driver in Tempe, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and San Francisco. The company, which has expressed its condolences to the victim's family through Twitter, says it is cooperating with the authorities in the investigation.

The autonomous mode

The Uber vehicle that caused the accident was in autonomous mode, without a driver, although there was a person inside behind the wheel, as reported by the police.

The first information released by the police indicates that the accident occurred on Sunday night (March 18), but they have not specified the time. The woman was transferred to the municipal hospital, but died due to the severity of the injuries.

Uber began testing with this type of vehicle in December 2017, in San Francisco.

After getting up a lot of excitement by skipping several traffic lights and discovering that they lacked permits to do this in the city where they have their headquarters, they decided to move to Arizona.

Cars without drivers: Uber vs Google

Prior to Uber, Google began putting these autonomous vehicles around its Mountain View headquarters and Highway 101, which links Silicon Valley with San Francisco.

This race for innovation between Google and Uber resulted in a theft of employees, patents, and a long trial that has cost Uber $245 million in compensation to the search engine. Ford, a symbol of American culture, has also shown interest in joining this type of technology. From Japan, Toyota has a local team as well as a laboratory in Silicon Valley.
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