Toyota has hit the brakes on its self-driving cars testing in the United States, citing a fatal accident in Arizona involving a pedestrian and an Uber self-driving vehicle Sunday as the reason, CNN reported.
The Japanese auto giant said Wednesday that though Toyota's testing in Michigan and California was small, it felt appropriate to temporarily suspend the operation, CNN wrote. Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons did not say how long the program would remain suspended.
"We feel the incident may have an emotional effect on our test drivers," Brian Lyons said, according to CNN.
Uber stopped its self-driving cars test in the Phoenix area as well as San Francisco, Toronto, and Pittsburgh because of the accident, believed to be the country's first pedestrian death involving an autonomous vehicle, according to the Arizona Republic.
Elaine Herzberg, 49, of Mesa, was walking a bike across Mill Avenue outside any crosswalk near the Marquee Theatre in Tempe, Arizona, at about 10 p.m. Sunday when she was hit by the Uber-owned vehicle in autonomous mode, dying from her injuries, police told the newspaper.
Authorities said the vehicle had a backup operator behind the wheel at the time of the accident, Rafaela Vasquez, 44. Police said the vehicle was traveling about 40 miles per hour at the time of the accident.
The Tempe Police and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the accident, according to the Republic. The NTSB will go through Uber's equipment and video to help determine what caused the crash, in addition to looking at "the vehicle’s interaction with the environment, other vehicles and vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and bicyclists," the newspaper reported.
Uber had been ferrying customers in self-driving cars in limited parts of Tempe and Scottsdale during their self-driving trial, the Republic said.
Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle that after reviewing the video from the vehicle, it initially appears that Uber was not at fault.
"The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," Moir told the Chronicle. "His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision. … It's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway."
Moir told the Chronicle, though, that she would not rule out charges against Vasquez, who was found to have a previous felony record, per USA Today.
CNN reported that Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google's parent company, is launching a public self-driving car service this year in the Phoenix, Arizona, while GM's Cruise and Intel are also testing in Arizona.
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