In March 2018, an Uber self-driving car struck and killed Elaine Herzberg as she pushed her bicycle across a dark road in Tempe, Arizona. The car’s sensors detected her six seconds before impact, but the system could not decide what it was seeing. Unknown object. Vehicle. Bicycle. Unknown object. Human. Bicycle. The classifications flickered and shifted while Herzberg remained in the car’s path. By the time the model settled on a category, she was already dead.
The system had never been taught that humans cross streets outside designated lines. It knew crosswalks. It knew zebra stripes, painted intersections and the precise geometry of pedestrian lanes. But it did not know real life. It did not know that people take shortcuts, that they jaywalk when they’re late, that survival often means breaking the rules designed by people who don’t have to walk home in the dark.
