YCLOAK

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has released a statement about the social network’s part in an illegal data collection scandal. 

“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said in a lengthy Facebook post. “The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”

Facebook disclosed on Friday that it has known since 2015 that British researcher Aleksandr Kogan illegally shared users’ information with a research firm, after collecting that data legally through an application for a personality quiz. The research firm is alleged to have illegally used the data of an estimated 50 million Facebook users to build profiles for U.S. political campaigns, including the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Facebook has been criticized for failing to alert its users to the incident in 2015. Wednesday was the first time Zuckerberg publicly addressed the issue.

Included in his statement was a timeline of events that said Facebook demanded in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica delete all improperly acquired data. He said last week he learned from news outlets that the company may not have deleted the data, despite providing certification of having done so. 

Cambridge Analytica has denied that it kept the data. One Facebook executive in charge of security is reportedly leaving the firm as a result the matter.

Zuckerberg said the incident amounted not only to a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook but also “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it.”

New safeguards

The Facebook founder outlined new precautions his social media platform will take to protect user data in future: identifying any other application developers found to have misused personal data, restricting the types of data available to developers, and ending their access to a user’s data if the user has not used the app in the past three months. He also said Facebook will make it easier for users to revoke apps’ permission to use their data, by putting the tool at the top of a user’s news feed.

Within an hour of its posting, Zuckerberg’s message had garnered more than 32,000 “likes” or other reactions and had been shared more than 10,000 times. User comments varied from fan club-style expressions of support to bitter complaints about Zuckerberg’s failure to speak sooner.

While controversy has swirled, Facebook’s stock value has taken a significant hit. The company has lost more than $45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days. 

Questions about regulation

The probe over Cambridge Analytica is just the latest flashpoint around Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and comes as the company faces questions about how it should be regulated and monitored going forward.

With its more than 2 billion monthly users and billions of dollars in profit, Facebook has become a powerful conduit of news, opinion and propaganda, much of it targeted at individuals based on their own data. The social media site and investigators have found that Russia-backed operatives had used Facebook to spread disinformation and propaganda. 

In recent months, the company, along with YouTube and Twitter, has changed some of its practices to reduce the power of automated accounts and propaganda.  Facebook has said it would hire 10,000 security employees.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a rare television interview Wednesday that Facebook clearly made a mistake in its part in an illegal data collection scandal.

“This was a major breach of trust. I am really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data,” he told CNN.

Zuckerberg did not elaborate on what mistake Facebook made, but he promised to check all apps and do a full forensic audit.

He also told CNN he is sure someone is trying to meddle in the upcoming November midterm U.S. congressional elections. He said Facebook is “really committed” to stop anyone from interfering in the elections through Facebook, including upcoming votes in Brazil and India.

WATCH: Facebook Under Fire for Data Misuse

Since 2015

Facebook disclosed on Friday that it has known since 2015 that British researcher Aleksandr Kogan illegally shared users’ information with a research firm, after collecting that data legally through an application for a personality quiz. The research firm is alleged to have illegally used the data of an estimated 50 million Facebook users to build profiles for U.S. political campaigns, including the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Facebook has been criticized for failing to alert its users to the incident in 2015. Wednesday was the first time Zuckerberg publicly addressed the issue.

Included in his statement was a timeline of events that said Facebook demanded in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica delete all improperly acquired data. He said last week he learned from news outlets that the company may not have deleted the data, despite providing certification of having done so. 

Cambridge Analytica has denied that it kept the data. One Facebook executive in charge of security is reportedly leaving the firm as a result the matter.

Zuckerberg said the incident amounted not only to a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook but also “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it.”

New safeguards

The Facebook founder outlined new precautions his social media platform will take to protect user data in future: identifying any other application developers found to have misused personal data, restricting the types of data available to developers, and ending their access to a user’s data if the user has not used the app in the past three months. He also said Facebook will make it easier for users to revoke apps’ permission to use their data, by putting the tool at the top of a user’s news feed.

Within an hour of its posting, Zuckerberg’s message had garnered more than 32,000 “likes” or other reactions and had been shared more than 10,000 times. User comments varied from fan club-style expressions of support to bitter complaints about Zuckerberg’s failure to speak sooner.

While controversy has swirled, Facebook’s stock value has taken a significant hit. The company has lost more than $45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days. 

Questions about regulation

The probe over Cambridge Analytica is just the latest flashpoint around Facebook’s role in the 2016 election and comes as the company faces questions about how it should be regulated and monitored going forward.

With its more than 2 billion monthly users and billions of dollars in profit, Facebook has become a powerful conduit of news, opinion and propaganda, much of it targeted at individuals based on their own data. The social media site and investigators have found that Russia-backed operatives had used Facebook to spread disinformation and propaganda. 

In recent months, the company, along with YouTube and Twitter, has changed some of its practices to reduce the power of automated accounts and propaganda.  Facebook has said it would hire 10,000 security employees.
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Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland to address Western government concerns that Russia exploits its anti-virus software to spy on customers, according to internal documents seen by Reuters.

Kaspersky is setting up the center in response to actions in the United States, Britain and Lithuania last year to stop using the company’s products, according to the documents, which were confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The action is the latest effort by Kaspersky, a global leader in anti-virus software, to parry accusations by the U.S. government and others that the company spies on customers at the behest of Russian intelligence. The U.S. last year ordered civilian government agencies to remove the Kaspersky software from their networks.

Kaspersky has strongly rejected the accusations and filed a lawsuit against the U.S. ban.

The U.S. allegations were the “trigger” for setting up the Swiss data center, said the person familiar with Kapersky’s Switzerland plans, but not the only factor.

“The world is changing,” they said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing internal company business. “There is more balkanisation and protectionism.”

The person declined to provide further details on the new project, but added: “This is not just a PR stunt. We are really changing our R&D infrastructure.”

A Kaspersky spokeswoman declined to comment on the documents reviewed by Reuters.

In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said: “To further deliver on the promises of our Global Transparency Initiative, we are finalizing plans for the opening of the company’s first transparency center this year, which will be located in Europe.”

“We understand that during a time of geopolitical tension, mirrored by an increasingly complex cyber-threat landscape, people may have questions and we want to address them.”

Kaspersky Lab launched a campaign in October to dispel concerns about possible collusion with the Russian government by promising to let independent experts scrutinize its software for security vulnerabilities and “back doors” that governments could exploit to spy on its customers.

The company also said at the time that it would open “transparency centers” in Asia, Europe and the United States but did not provide details. The new Swiss facility is dubbed the Swiss Transparency Centre, according to the documents.

Data review

Work in Switzerland is due to begin “within weeks” and be completed by early 2020, said the person with knowledge of the matter.

The plans have been approved by Kaspersky Lab CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky, who owns a majority of the privately held company, and will be announced publicly in the coming months, according to the source.

“Eugene is upset. He would rather spend the money elsewhere. But he knows this is necessary,” the person said.

It is possible the move could be derailed by the Russian security services, who might resist moving the data center outside of their jurisdiction, people familiar with Kaspersky and its relations with the government said.

Western security officials said Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, exerts influence over Kaspersky management decisions, though the company has repeatedly denied those allegations.

The Swiss center will collect and analyze files identified as suspicious on the computers of tens of millions of Kaspersky customers in the United States and European Union, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters. Data from other customers will continue to be sent to a Moscow data center for review and analysis.

Files would only be transmitted from Switzerland to Moscow in cases when anomalies are detected that require manual review, the person said, adding that about 99.6 percent of such samples do not currently undergo this process.

A third party will review the center’s operations to make sure that all requests for such files are properly signed, stored and available for review by outsiders including foreign governments, the person said.

Moving operations to Switzerland will address concerns about laws that enable Russian security services to monitor data transmissions inside Russia and force companies to assist law enforcement agencies, according to the documents describing the plan.

The company will also move the department which builds its anti-virus software using code written in Moscow to Switzerland, the documents showed.

Kaspersky has received “solid support” from the Swiss government, said the source, who did not identify specific officials who have endorsed the plan.
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When you are watching a television show and see someone get their heart shocked back into a rhythm, you will see their entire body rise up in the air. That’s what happens when a defibrillator is used, because the shock is that powerful. As VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists are now working on better, more effective, and less-shocking ways to get a heart to start beating once again.
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Heat exchangers are some of the most widely used energy-transfer devices, helping cool everything from car engines to power plants.

At the recent ARPA-e conference, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists from the University of Maryland showcased an advanced 3-D printer that, combined with a wire-laying head, cuts in half the time needed to manufacture heat exchangers.

David Hymas, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, said that in most cases in a heat exchanger, the heat is transferred by forcing air over pipes or tubes with circulating water, which is often pumped from a nearby river or lake.

Reduce water use

“Currently power plants draw about 40 percent of all the freshwater supply in the United States,” Hymas said. Water consumption, he added, could be cut in half if lightweight air-cooled heat exchangers were created in 3-D printers.

“The water would flow in through one manifold entering these water tubes, right here, and then flow out through the other manifold. Air would blow across it, cooling these fins,” he said.

Printing a heat exchanger

At the school’s Advanced Heat Exchangers and Process Intensification Laboratory, Hymas showed off a heat exchanger manufactured in a lab-size 3-D printer that includes a wire-laying device. The first head in the machine builds up layers of polymer tubes, while another head lays copper or aluminum wire across them.

The printer used for testing the idea took almost 24 hours to create a shoebox-size heat exchanger, but research associate Farah Singer says the industrial-scale prototype machine proved to be much faster.

“It has 10 polymer heads and it is capable of printing, of laying at the same time, 45 fibers, 45 metal fibers, so we are talking about a full layer,” she said. “This machine is capable of printing in eight hours a 1 meter square heat exchanger. We are talking almost 20 kilowatts or 30 kilowatt heat exchanger.”

Reduction in weight and cost for 3-D-printed heat exchangers reaches 50 percent, depending on the application, which can range from power plants to air conditioning to cooling electronic devices.

“For the electronic cooling, for example, so far our experimental results have shown that we could have up to 52 percent reduction in cost while we have 26 percent increase in performance,” Singer said.

An added advantage is that 3-D printers allow creating very complex geometries, with the resolution between the cooling wires as low as 100 microns. The project was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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China is testing unmanned tanks that could be equipped with artificial intelligence, a state-run newspaper said Wednesday, as the country continues with its military modernization program.

State television showed images this week of the unmanned tanks undergoing testing, the Global Times newspaper reported.

Footage showed a Type 59 tank being driven by remote control, in what the paper said was the first time a Chinese-made unmanned tank has been shown in a public forum.

The Type 59 tank is based on an old Soviet model first used in China in the 1950s and has been produced in large numbers and has a long service life, it said.

“A large number of due-to-retire Type 59 tanks can be converted into unmanned vehicles if equipped with artificial intelligence,” Liu Qingshan, the chief editor of Tank and Armored Vehicle, told the newspaper.

Unmanned tanks will be able to work on other unmanned equipment, integrate information from satellites, aircraft or submarines, the report added.

China is in the middle of a modernization program for its armed forces, including building stealth fighters and new aircraft carriers, as President Xi Jinping looks to assert the country’s growing power.
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The deadly collision between an Uber autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian near Phoenix is bringing calls for tougher self-driving regulations, but advocates for a hands-off approach say big changes aren’t needed.

Police in Tempe, Arizona, say the female pedestrian walked in front of the Uber SUV in the dark of night, and neither the automated system nor the human backup driver stopped in time. Local authorities haven’t determined fault, and federal transportation authorities say they won’t release any findings on the crash until their investigation is complete.

Current federal regulations have few requirements specifically for self-driving vehicles, leaving it for states to handle. Many, such as Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, cede key decisions to companies as they compete for investment that will come with the technology.

No matter whether police find Uber or the pedestrian at fault in the Sunday crash, many federal and state officials say their regulations are sufficient to keep people safe while allowing the potentially lifesaving technology to grow. Others, however, argue the regulations don’t go far enough.

“I don’t think we need to jump to conclusions and make changes to our business,” said Michigan state Senator Jim Ananich, the chamber’s minority leader. He and other Democrats joined Republicans to pass a bill last year that doesn’t require human backup drivers and allows companies wide latitude to conduct tests.

Ananich called the death of Elaine Herzberg, 49, a tragedy and said companies need to continue refining their systems. “I want that work to happen here, because we have a 100-year history of making the best cars on the planet,” he said. “It’s not perfect by any means, and we are just going to have to keep working until it is.”

Proponents of light regulations, including the Trump administration’s Transportation Department, say the technology could reduce the 40,000 traffic deaths that happen annually in the U.S. The government says 94 percent of crashes are caused by human error that automated systems can reduce because they don’t get drunk, sleepy or inattentive.

U.S. Representative Bob Latta, an Ohio Republican who chairs a House subcommittee that passed an autonomous vehicle bill, said the measure has sufficient provisions to ensure the cars operate safely. It requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop safety standards and allows the agency to update outdated regulations. It also prohibits states from regulating autonomous driving systems to avoid a patchwork of rules, Latta said.

The bill has passed the House. The Senate is considering a similar measure.

About 6,000 pedestrians were killed last year in crashes that involved cars driven by humans, he said. “What we want to do is see that stop or try to get it preventable,” he said.

But safety advocates and others say companies are moving too quickly, and they fear others will die as road testing finds gaps that automated systems can’t handle.

Jason Levine, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said without proper regulations, more crashes will happen. “There’s no guardrails on the technology when it’s being tested without any sense of how safe it is before you put it on the road,” he said.

Others say that the laser and radar sensors on the SUV involved in the Tempe accident should have spotted Herzberg in the darkness and braked or swerved to avoid her. Development should be slowed, with standards set for how far sensors must see and how quickly vehicles should react, they said.

Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst for Navigant Research, expects the Arizona crash to slow research. “Responsible companies will take this opportunity to go back and look at their test procedures,” he said.

Toyota already is taking a step back, pausing its fully autonomous testing with human backups for a few days to let drivers process the Arizona crash and “help them do their jobs with less concern,” the company said. The company says it constantly refines its procedures.

Without standards for software coding quality and cybersecurity, there will be more deaths as autonomous vehicles are tested on public roads, said Lee McKnight, associate professor of information studies at Syracuse University.

“We can say eventually they’ll learn not to kill us,” McKnight said. “In the meantime, they will be killing more people.”
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Facebook’s latest privacy scandal, involving Trump campaign consultants who allegedly stole data on tens of millions of users in order to influence elections, has some people reconsidering their relationship status with the social network.

There’s just one problem: There isn’t much of anywhere else to go.

Facebook has weathered many such blow-ups before and is used to apologizing and moving on. But the stakes are bigger this time.

Regulatory authorities are starting to focus on the data misappropriation, triggering a 9 percent decline in Facebook’s normally high-flying stock since Monday. Some of that reflects fear that changes in Facebook’s business will hurt profits or that advertisers and users will sour on the social network.

The furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm accused of stealing Facebook data, followed a bad year in which Facebook acknowledged helping spread fake news and propaganda from Russian agents. It also came less than three months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the world that he would devote the year to fixing Facebook. Instead, things seem to be getting worse.

“It’s more serious economically, politically, financially, and will require a more robust response in order to regain users’ trust,” said Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Not so easy

Yet leaving Facebook isn’t simple for some people.

Arvind Rajan, a tech executive from San Francisco who deactivated his account on Monday, suddenly discovered he needs to create new usernames and passwords for a variety of apps and websites. That’s because he had previously logged in with his Facebook ID.

It’s a pain, he said, “but not the end of the world.” And because he is bothered by Facebook’s “ham-handed” response to recent problems, the inconvenience is worth it.

For other users looking to leave, it can feel as if there are no real alternatives. Twitter? Too flighty, too public. Instagram? Whoops, owned by Facebook. Snapchat? Please, unless you’re under 25 — in which case you’re probably not on Facebook to begin with.

Facebook connects 2.2 billion users and a host of communities that have sprung up on its network. No other company can match the breadth or depth of these connections — thanks in part to Facebook’s proclivity for squashing or swallowing up its competition.

What about your photos? 

But it is precisely in Facebook’s interest to make users feel Facebook is the only place to connect with others. Where else will grandmothers see photos of their far-flung grandkids? How will new mothers connect to other parents also up at 4 a.m. with a newborn?

“My only hesitation is that there are hundreds of pictures posted over 13 years of my life that I do not want to lose access to. If there was a way to recover these photos, I would deactivate immediately,” Daniel Schwartz, who lives in Atlanta, said in an email. 

People eager to delete their profiles may find unexpected problems that point to how integral Facebook is to many activities, said Ifeoma Ajunwa, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University.

“It is getting more and more difficult for people to delete Facebook, since it’s not just as a social media platform but also almost like a meeting square,” she said.

Parents could soon realize that their child’s soccer schedule with games and pickup times is only on a Facebook page, for example. Many businesses also schedule meetings via Facebook.

“It’s more and more difficult for people to feel plugged in if you’re not on Facebook,” Ajunwa said.

Exit can take 90 days

Not surprisingly, Facebook doesn’t make it easy to leave. To permanently delete your account, you need to make a request to the company. The process can take several days, and if you log in during this time, your request will be canceled. It can take up to 90 days to delete everything.

There’s a less permanent way to leave — deactivation — which hides your profile from everyone but lets you return if you change your mind.

Lili Orozco, 28, an office manager for her family’s heating and cooling company in Watkinsville, Georgia, deleted her account in December. She was upset that every new app she downloaded would ask for her Facebook contacts.

And while she liked staying in touch with people, she was irritated by the conspiracy stories her high school friends would share.

“Falsehoods spread faster on Facebook than the truth does,” she said. She now gets her news from Twitter and shares pictures with friends through Instagram.
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A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions as authorities stepped up efforts to determine if the personal data of social-media users has been used improperly to influence elections.

The request comes amid allegations that a data-mining firm based in the U.K. used information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. The company, Cambridge Analytica, has denied wrongdoing.

However, the firm’s board of directions announced Tuesday evening that it had suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending an independent investigation of his actions. Nix made comments to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News about various unsavory services Cambridge Analytica provided its clients.

“In the view of the board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” the board said in a statement.

Facebook also drew continued criticism for its alleged inaction to protect users’ privacy. Earlier Tuesday, the chairman of the U.K. parliamentary media committee, Damian Collins, said his group has repeatedly asked Facebook how it uses data and that Facebook officials “have been misleading to the committee.”

“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” Collins wrote in a note addressed directly to Zuckerberg. “Given your commitment at the start of the New Year to ‘fixing’ Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you.”

Facebook sidestepped questions on whether Zuckerberg would appear, saying instead that it’s currently focused on conducting its own reviews.

​Personal data

The request to appear comes as Britain’s information commissioner said she was using all her legal powers to investigate the social-media giant and Cambridge Analytica.

Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is pursuing a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s servers. She has also asked Facebook to cease its own audit of Cambridge Analytica’s data use.

“Our advice to Facebook is to back away and let us go in and do our work,” she said.

Cambridge Analytica said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation. However, Denham’s office said the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.

Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.

Chris Wylie, who once worked for Cambridge Analytica, was quoted as saying the company used the data to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.

Undercover investigation

The firm found itself in further allegations of wrongdoing. Britain’s Channel 4 used an undercover investigation to record Nix saying that the company could use unorthodox methods to wage successful political campaigns for clients.

He said the company could “send some girls” around to a rival candidate’s house, suggesting that girls from Ukraine are beautiful and effective in this role.

He also said the company could “offer a large amount of money” to a rival candidate and have the whole exchange recorded so it could be posted on the internet to show that the candidate was corrupt.

Nix says in a statement that he deeply regrets his role in the meeting and has apologized to staff.

“I am aware how this looks, but it is simply not the case,” he said. “I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called ‘honeytraps,’ and nor does it use untrue material for any purposes.”

Nix told the BBC the Channel 4 sting was “intended to embarrass us.”

“We see this as a coordinated attack by the media that’s been going on for very, very many months in order to damage the company that had some involvement with the election of Donald Trump,” he said.

The data harvesting used by Cambridge Analytica has also triggered calls for further investigation from the European Union, as well as federal and state officials in the United States.
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Alphabet’s Google is launching the Google News Initiative to weed out fake news online and during breaking news situations, it said in a blog post Tuesday.

Google said it plans to spend $300 million over the next three years to improve the accuracy and quality of news appearing on its platforms. 

The changes come as Google, Facebook and Twitter face a backlash over their role during the U.S. presidential election by allowing the spread of false and often malicious information that might have swayed voters toward Republican candidate Donald Trump.

In a separate blog post, Google said it was launching a tool to help subscribe to news publications.

Subscribe with Google will let users buy a subscription on participating news sites using their Google account and manage all their subscriptions in one place.

Google said it would launch the news subscription with the Financial Times, The New York Times, Le Figaro and The Telegraph among others. The search engine said it plans to add more news publishers soon.
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A fatal pedestrian crash involving a self-driving Uber SUV in a Phoenix suburb could have far-reaching consequences for the new technology as automakers and other companies race to be the first with cars that operate on their own.

The crash Sunday night in Tempe was the first death involving a full autonomous test vehicle. The Volvo was in self-driving mode with a human backup driver at the wheel when it struck 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was walking a bicycle outside the lines of a crosswalk in Tempe, police said.

 

Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The ride-sharing company has been testing self-driving vehicles for months as it competes with other technology companies and automakers like Ford and General Motors.

 

Though many in the industries had been dreading a fatal crash they knew it was inevitable.

 

Tempe police Sgt. Ronald Elcock said local authorities haven’t determined fault but urged people to use crosswalks. He told reporters at a news conference Monday the Uber vehicle was traveling around 40 mph when it hit Helzberg immediately as she stepped on to the street.

 

Neither she nor the backup driver showed signs of impairment, he said.

 

“The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk, so it was midblock,” Elcock said. “And as soon as she walked into the lane of traffic, she was struck by the vehicle.”

 

The National Transportation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which can enact regulations, sent investigators.

 

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on his Twitter account and said the company is cooperating with investigators.

 

The public’s image of the vehicles will be defined by stories like the crash in Tempe, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies self-driving vehicles. It may turn out that there was nothing either the vehicle or its human backup could have done to avoid the crash, he said.

 

Either way, the fatality could hurt the technology’s image and lead to a push for more regulations at the state and federal levels, Smith said.

Autonomous vehicles with laser, radar and camera sensors and sophisticated computers have been billed as the way to reduce the more than 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the U.S. alone. Ninety-four percent of crashes are caused by human error, the government says.

 

Self-driving vehicles don’t drive drunk, don’t get sleepy and aren’t easily distracted. But they do have faults.

 

“We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”

 

In 2016, the latest year available, more than 6,000 U.S. pedestrians were killed by vehicles.

 

The federal government has voluntary guidelines for companies that want to test autonomous vehicles, leaving much of the regulation up to states.

 

Many states, including Michigan and Arizona, have taken a largely hands-off approach, hoping to gain jobs from the new technology, while California and others have taken a harder line.

 

California is among states that require manufacturers to report any incidents during the testing phase. As of early March, the state’s motor vehicle agency had received 59 such reports.

 

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey used light regulations to entice Uber to the state after the company had a shaky rollout of test cars in San Francisco. Arizona has no reporting requirements. Hundreds of vehicles with automated driving systems have been on Arizona’s roads.

 

Ducey’s office expressed sympathy for Herzberg’s family and said safety is the top priority.

 

The crash in Arizona isn’t the first involving an Uber autonomous test vehicle. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe. No serious injuries were reported, and the driver of the other car was cited for a violation.

 

Herzberg’s death is the first involving an autonomous test vehicle but not the first in a car with some self-driving features. The driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in 2016 when his car, operating on its Autopilot system, crashed into a tractor-trailer in Florida.

 

The NTSB said that driver inattention was to blame but that design limitations with the system played a major role in the crash.

 

The U.S. Transportation Department is considering further voluntary guidelines that it says would help foster innovation. Proposals also are pending in Congress, including one that would stop states from regulating autonomous vehicles, Smith said.

 

Peter Kurdock, director of regulatory affairs for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety in Washington, said the group sent a letter Monday to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao saying it is concerned about a lack of action and oversight by the department as autonomous vehicles are developed. That letter was planned before the crash.

 

Kurdock said the deadly accident should serve as a “startling reminder” to members of Congress that they need to “think through all the issues to put together the best bill they can to hopefully prevent more of these tragedies from occurring.”
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