Self-driving car industry faces critical test after first death

The death of a woman in Arizona struck by a self-driving car with no human control, the first fatality involving a fully autonomous vehicle, is an event the nascent industry has long dreaded and comes at a sensitive time.

Monday’s accident involving an Uber Technologies car is shaping up as the first significant test of how policy makers and the public will respond to the new technology. The incident occurred as companies have been pushing for regulatory clearance to offer self-driving car ride services as soon as next year. On Friday, Uber and Alphabet Inc’s Waymo car unit had written U.S. senators urging them to approve sweeping self-driving car legislation “in the coming weeks.”

Automakers and technology companies such as Uber, General Motors and Toyota Motor have made substantial investments that hinge on significant revisions to existing vehicle safety regulations written under the assumption that a licensed human would always be in control of a vehicle.

Auto and technology industry officials have warned that there could be accidents and deaths involving self-driving cars, but they have said countless additional lives would be saved as robotic systems programmed to obey traffic laws took over for distracted, sleepy or impaired human drivers.

Mark Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said on Monday the public should not overreact to the Uber incident. He noted that 6,000 pedestrians and nearly 40,000 people die annually on U.S. roads in more than 6 million crashes annually.