Sooner Than You Think
The Autonomous-Car Company That’s Selling Safety First
Intel-owned Mobileye says it can leapfrog Alphabet and Uber on the path to driverless ubiquity.
On Sunday, March 18, a 49-year-old woman named Elaine Herzberg walked her bicycle across Mill Avenue, a divided highway just north of downtown Tempe, Ariz., and was hit head-on by a Volvo SUV traveling at about 40 miles per hour.
The death would have been an ordinary tragedy—6,000 pedestrians were killed by cars last year in the U.S. alone—but for one thing: The driver was a piece of software created by Uber Technologies Inc. This was the first known fatality caused by a driverless car. The ride-hailing app company and its main chip supplier, Nvidia Corp., suspended testing indefinitely, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced it would conduct an investigation. Uber is cooperating.