Serious safety lapses led to Ubers fatal self-driving crash, new documents suggest

Uber did not have a formal safety plan in place at the time when one of its self-driving cars killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona, last year, according to a trove of new documents released by the National Traffic Safety Board on Tuesday. Its autonomous vehicles were not programmed to react to people who were jaywalking, and the company had been involved in over three dozen crashes prior to the one that killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in March 2018.

These new details cast a harsh light on Uber’s self-driving vehicle program, which has tentatively restarted testing after shutting down in the wake of the March 18th crash. And they set the stage for a potentially contentious hearing later this month when NTSB will decide the probable causes...

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