In theory one of the benefits of an autonomous car is its many-times-faster-than-human reaction and the fact that it doesn't ever get "distracted".
Meanwhile, multiple brands of existing, human-driven cars already have the ability to detect an impending collision and avoid it, either through automatic emergency braking or other mechanisms. If Uber isn't even caught up to the stuff that's in cars for the general public, then what the hell are they doing?
While I agree in general, I don't think we have enough details here to say that this was preventable by the Uber car, or any existing car. It's possible that the officially-at-fault car was sufficiently outside the envelope of expected behavior that no system could have prevented the crash. Stuff like predicting whether someone else will yield is basically mind reading, a Hard Problem in the general case.
> Meanwhile, multiple brands of existing, human-driven cars already have the ability to detect an impending collision and avoid it, either through automatic emergency braking or other mechanisms.
Without more details we can't say whether this accident would have been avoidable with those systems.
Existing active collision avoidance systems only work in the front aspect. Passive warning systems will give warnings about crossing traffic in some limited cases but it's still on the driver to react. That's about it for human-driven cars right now.
Meanwhile, multiple brands of existing, human-driven cars already have the ability to detect an impending collision and avoid it, either through automatic emergency braking or other mechanisms. If Uber isn't even caught up to the stuff that's in cars for the general public, then what the hell are they doing?