Unless assisted driving is close to near perfection (that is, it becomes a true auto-pilot without the need of assistance), we're going to see much worse numbers of accidents on the streets for assisted-driving cars.
Assisted-driving requires the same, if not more attention, as it essentially becomes like supervising an inexperienced driver that is prone to make stupid mistakes in otherwise normal circumstances. If you ever had a kid, you should be pretty familiar with how stressful this is.
But thanks to the PR spin, the driver is led to think that he can keep less attention, until he pays none at all. Assisted driving is even more boring than regular driving, lowering the attention span.
What could possibly go wrong?
We all owe each other a duty of care. Excuses about 'she just walked out in front of me' are just that: excuses. The driver in this case had plenty of time to slow down and avoid a collision & simply chose not to do so. That's inexcusable.
The fact that the driver was a pile of self-driving code doesn't change that one iota.
No. Children wander into roads. Drivers have a responsibility to keep an eye out for the unexpected. They are faultless only if they were driving responsibly and had no opportunity to react — neither of which were the case with the Uber.
Not only did the pedestrian instigate that, the failsafe(which are supposed to be very simple to back up complex and more fallable systems) to not getting hit and killed by a car was entirely in the pedestrians area of responsibility; don't walk into traffic.