[amartya916]

"for 1.3 seconds the system knew an accident was going to happen and failed to act on that knowledge."

This is so tragic. Even Volvo's own collision avoidance system would (could?) have mitigated the crash a fair bit. From Volvo's own spec. sheet [1]: "For speeds between 45 and 70 km/h, the collision is mitigated." In this case, the NTSB reports mentions that the car was traveling at 43mph, i.e. 68.8 kmph :(.

What bothers me is that these systems are on public roads, without public oversight. Sure, Uber got permission from the local authorities, but getting an independent team of technologists and ethicists to sign off on the basic parameters should have been the bare minimum ... yes, that would take time, but do we really want to give companies, especially ones like Uber with a history of ethical transgressions, the benefit of the doubt?

[1] https://tinyurl.com/y9sp2fmu (WARNING: This open/downloads a PDF that I referred to above. Page 5 has the paragraph on pedestrian collision detection specs)