The news is full of reports of the first pedestrian fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle. This has been one of the many concerns with autonomous vehicles, and rightfully so. But the devil is in the details, which have not been fully discovered. We decided to take a look at pedestrian deaths in general, and found some surprising information.

A fact sheet from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that in 2015, 5,396 pedestrians were killed and another 70,000 were injured. This equates to a pedestrian being killed every 1.6 hours and injured every 7.5 minutes; far more frequently than we expected. And pedestrian fatalities rose by 11 percent from 2015 to 2016, likely due to lower gas prices putting more cars on the road, and distracted drivers and walkers.

Most fatalities, 74 percent, occurred in the dark. We have all seen pedestrians in dark clothing in the evening that are very difficult to see. This may be part of what happened; neither the vehicle nor the safety driver could see the pedestrian in the dark. Between March and May most of the fatalities occur between 9:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. It is believed this accident took place at 10 p.m. Most fatalities occur at non-intersections. Weekends, which are defined as from 6:00 p.m. Friday to 5:59 a.m. Monday, are the most common days for accidents. This accident took place on a Sunday evening. Looking at existing statistics, this accident is not that unusual, other than the fact that an autonomous vehicle was involved.

Most of the details surrounding the collision have not been released, but if the collision was easily foreseeable and avoidable, questions will begin arising about Uber's safety protocols and about the effectiveness of their self-driving technology. In the incident at question, there was a human driver behind the wheel, ready to take over in case an issue arose. However, before any opinions on the safety of autonomous vehicles can be legitimately formed, we must know the details of what happened and why. Did the woman suddenly walk in front of the vehicle? It happens with human drivers, where there just was no time to stop. While autonomous vehicles supposedly stop faster than human drivers, if the pedestrian was not visible to the vehicle or the human driver, the fault lies with the pedestrian. The difficulty here will be getting people to analyze this accident for what it truly was, and not jump to conclusions that autonomous vehicles are more dangerous than human drivers. It will take some time to sort out the details; hopefully it will be looked at carefully and there will be no knee-jerk reactions that restrict testing unless there are true programming issues found in the vehicles.

Liability is of course an issue; will the manufacturer of the vehicle be held liable, will the safety driver be held liable, will the pedestrian be at fault for walking into the road, or will it be seen as just an accident with no one actually at fault? This is one of the big questions that has been floating around since autonomous vehicles were first discussed. How this sorts out will be incredibly significant for the future of autonomous vehicles, their liability and insurability.