[Pilfer]

>A human driver could have seen the person and/or bike from a long way off.

Not true at all, the person was not standing under lit streetlights and was in the shadows. Humans have problems detecting objects in the shadows, especially at night.

3M made a video illustrating how difficult it is to see people at night. In this video, people wearing bright-colored clothing don't even show up until 250 feet away. According to the national safety council, a human driver traveling at 30mph at night, may take up 500 feet to react to and stop when there is an object in the road.

I reccomend watching this video as it strongly changed my views about night driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMvM7-9lgeg

[buvanshak]

>Not true at all, the person was not standing under lit streetlights and was in the shadows...

The 'shadow' is appearing completely dark due to the poor dynamic range of the camera. It won't appear so to a normal human eye..Also, people use high beams in this situations which enables seeing stuff really far away, which would also should have saved the day in this case..

[Pilfer]

The pedestrian is 1) wearing black 2) not wearing any sort of safety reflectors 3) crossing in darkness not under street lights. In the safety video I linked, it's clear that such a pedestrian in the road would be very tough spot and react to. The safety video says there is a very real possibly that a human driver would hit such a pedestrian.

Citing the camera's poor dynamic range, does not imply a human in the same situation would have enough dynamic range to spot a pedestrian in the same circumstance.

High beams would have saved a life here, however in many situations they are illegal to use.

[askvictor]

Perhaps it would be cleared if OP had written "A human driver _might_ have seen the person"

[jon_richards]

>In this video

Well that's kinda my point, isn't it?