This happens all the time at night where I live. People cross the road and you don't see them until you're quite close.
Cars are highly visible to pedestrians (due to headlights). I think pedestrians assume that they themselves are equally as visible to the car driver too - "I can see them, so they must be able to see me." is the subconscious line of thought I think.
Often though pedestrians get "lost" in the lights of oncoming vehicles or the brake lights of cars ahead, or are just in your blind spots.
The other thing is, I've noticed that people who have never learnt to drive often don't really appreciate how cars act and are not very good at estimating the distances involved. You've probably noticed this when crossing streets - some people take some eye-raising risks when crossing the road while others wait ... guess which ones are the drivers who are experienced with how cars/drivers act!
My guess here is the poor woman was stationary in the median thinking "Should I cross?" as the car was approaching. She probably then decided she had time to make it across before the Uber car got there so started to cross the street, perhaps assuming the vehicle was further away than it was, or would slow down since the "driver" would see her. We've all done this I am sure ... sometimes with time to spare, sometimes cutting it a bit close.
Perhaps if this was what happened, the Uber car "saw" her stationary in the median and disregarded her as a stationary road-side object and carried on until it was too late. IIRC these systems need to disregard static objects at the side of the road (e.g. signs, trees etc) otherwise they'd be slamming the brakes on all the time. Perhaps the initial movement she made into the road was disregarded as "sensor noise" (e.g. you can see objects "jumping around" a bit in this video from Uber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkkhlxYNwE) from what it thought was a static object, but that would not explain the apparent total non-reaction from the vehicle when she was clearly in the path.
I've driven a XC90 a few times - it has auto-lane keeping when using cruise control on the highway. Perhaps that was what was driving, not the Uber system.
I think your guess is dead on - it's what I had imagined the scenario was before I saw the video. I see this all the time, and the social contract between car and pedestrian is the car slows. Heck even half the time people do this they don't even look at the car - it's quite crazy - I never do that mostly because I make the assumption that I will be the unlucky shit that was hit when someone decided to bite down on a messy Carls Jr burger.
Regardless of how I do this, it's a pretty accepted contract and definitely still piles the fault on the SDV in my opinion.
What if she was stationary in the middle, but was stationary in the middle, in the left lane?
I mean, she began to cross fron the center (left) to the right, walked a bit, saw the car light, stopped, and then decided to cross again? The sensor would have seen her as a stationary object in a lane the car wasn't drving into. And then she begans to walk, and this movement is disregarded as noise in the beggining, and then it's too late because she walked ? It just takes few steps to cross a lane, about 5 or 6...
Cars are highly visible to pedestrians (due to headlights). I think pedestrians assume that they themselves are equally as visible to the car driver too - "I can see them, so they must be able to see me." is the subconscious line of thought I think.
Often though pedestrians get "lost" in the lights of oncoming vehicles or the brake lights of cars ahead, or are just in your blind spots.
The other thing is, I've noticed that people who have never learnt to drive often don't really appreciate how cars act and are not very good at estimating the distances involved. You've probably noticed this when crossing streets - some people take some eye-raising risks when crossing the road while others wait ... guess which ones are the drivers who are experienced with how cars/drivers act!
My guess here is the poor woman was stationary in the median thinking "Should I cross?" as the car was approaching. She probably then decided she had time to make it across before the Uber car got there so started to cross the street, perhaps assuming the vehicle was further away than it was, or would slow down since the "driver" would see her. We've all done this I am sure ... sometimes with time to spare, sometimes cutting it a bit close.
Perhaps if this was what happened, the Uber car "saw" her stationary in the median and disregarded her as a stationary road-side object and carried on until it was too late. IIRC these systems need to disregard static objects at the side of the road (e.g. signs, trees etc) otherwise they'd be slamming the brakes on all the time. Perhaps the initial movement she made into the road was disregarded as "sensor noise" (e.g. you can see objects "jumping around" a bit in this video from Uber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkkhlxYNwE) from what it thought was a static object, but that would not explain the apparent total non-reaction from the vehicle when she was clearly in the path.
I've driven a XC90 a few times - it has auto-lane keeping when using cruise control on the highway. Perhaps that was what was driving, not the Uber system.
Tragic stuff regardless of what happened.