First pedestrian death from self-driving car in US
San Francisco: Video of the first self-driving car crash that killed a pedestrian showed how the autonomous Uber failed to slow down as it fatally hit a 49-year-old woman walking her bike across the street.
The newly released footage of the collision that killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday night has raised fresh questions about why the self-driving car did not stop when a human entered its path and has sparked scrutiny of regulations in the state, which has encouraged testing of the autonomous technology.
“It’s just awful,” Tina Marie Herzberg White, a stepdaughter of the victim, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “There should be a criminal case.”
Police have released two videos of the case – one outside and one showing the interior of the Volvo SUV. The four-second exterior video showed the car driving down a somewhat dark and largely empty street as it collided into the woman walking directly in its path.
The 14-second video inside the car showed the operator, identified by police as Rafaela Vasquez, 44, appearing to look at something inside the vehicle and not at the road at the time of the collision. She alternated between looking down and looking forward and appeared shocked at the last minute just as the car failed to stop.
Local prosecutors will decide whether criminal charges are warranted. Some have argued that under new rules issued by Arizona’s governor, a strong proponent of the technology, a company like Uber could possibly be criminally liable if an autonomous car negligently killed someone. But police chief Sylvia Moir suggested in an interview that she believed Uber wasn’t at fault.
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India, China decide to resume Kailash Mansarovar Yatra
New Delhi, Jan 27 (PTI): India and China on Monday decided to resume the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra as the two sides agreed to take certain people-centric steps to "stabilise and rebuild" ties.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said this following Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri's talks with his Chinese counterpart Sun Weidong in Beijing.
It said the two sides also agreed in principle to resume direct air services between the two countries.
"As agreed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping at their meeting in Kazan in October, the two sides reviewed the state of India-China bilateral relations comprehensively and agreed to take certain people-centric steps to stabilize and rebuild ties," the MEA said.
"In this context, the two sides decided to resume the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in the summer of 2025," it said.
The MEA said the two sides also agreed to hold an early meeting of the India-China expert level mechanism to discuss resumption of provision of hydrological data and other cooperation pertaining to trans-border rivers.
It said the two sides agreed to take appropriate measures to further promote and facilitate people-to-people exchanges, including media and think-tank interactions.
"They agreed in principle to resume direct air services between the two countries; the relevant technical authorities on the two sides will meet and negotiate an updated framework for this purpose at an early date," the MEA said.
