Uber Reaches Settlement With Family Of Arizona Woman Killed By Driverless Car

Uber Technologies has reached a settlement with the family of the woman killed earlier this month in Tempe, Arizona, after one of the company's driverless test vehicles struck her as she was crossing a street. Cristina Perez Hesano, an attorney with the firm of Bellah Perez in Glendale, Arizona, said “the matter has been resolved” between Uber and the daughter and husband of Elaine Herzberg, 49, who died after being hit by an Uber self-driving SUV while walking across a street in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe earlier this month. The law firm representing them said that Herzberg’s daughter and husband, whose names were not disclosed, will have no further comment on the matter as they consider it resolved. Immediately after the crash, Uber voluntarily suspended its autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona, as well as California, Pittsburgh and Toronto. Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and chipmaker Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) have also suspended self-driving car testing on public roads, as they and other companies await the results of an ongoing investigation into the Tempe incident, which is believed to be the first death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving vehicle. On the night of March 18 an Uber autonomous Volvo SUV struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was walking a bicycle across a darkened boulevard in Tempe, near Phoenix. A video taken from a dash-mounted camera inside the vehicle that was released by Tempe police showed the SUV travelling along a dark street when suddenly the headlights illuminated Herzberg in front of the SUV. An internal camera in the Uber test vehicle showed the human safety driver mostly looking down and not at the road in the moments before the crash.
Uber reaches an out-of-court settlement with the victim's family.