The lidar saw Herzberg 6 seconds before impact, and there are news stories detailing email evidence that Meyhofer and others at UberATG intentionally made the perception system filter sparse lidar returns at the time (likely because they were having difficulty with trees). Today, Meyhofer and others have vested tens of millions in stock following the Softbank investment. While the safety driver was a factor in the crash, there is a gross amount of greed that was also a factor.
Has Uber improved since then? I attended an UberATG recruiting event where they showed a disengagement where they almost hit a little girl after she got off a school bus. (They were showing this because they re-created the scene on their test track and wanted to show they learned something). But in the perception video of the event they showed, you can clearly see there being lidar returns reflected off the school bus mirror, the system clustering them into an object, and the Uber car slowing down for this ghost object. The girl was saved by this false positive, probably not by the safety driver hitting the brakes. Uber does some interesting SDC research, but I would not feel safe being within 100 meters of any of their cars.
Also ex-Cruise here. Yes there have been accidents, and there are accidents every month or so-- just check the public DMV reports. A lot are minor, like other cars knocking the radars off the front of the car back when Cruise cars had radars that stuck out awkwardly. Some were worse though-- I've seen one where airbags deployed in the other car (other car was going very fast and rear-ended the AV). Cruise has not had an UberATG / Elain Herzberg -magnitude accident, though.
The cars have a handbook for safety drivers and the case is handled like almost any other accident. This system was put in place following the first accident that occurred near the SF courthouse years ago (safety drivers were hired following that crash).
What happens if there's no safety driver? Remote assistance is there, and the city is not a large place if you have to recover a wayward robot. I am not a lawyer; there will probably be some regulation eventually.
Has Uber improved since then? I attended an UberATG recruiting event where they showed a disengagement where they almost hit a little girl after she got off a school bus. (They were showing this because they re-created the scene on their test track and wanted to show they learned something). But in the perception video of the event they showed, you can clearly see there being lidar returns reflected off the school bus mirror, the system clustering them into an object, and the Uber car slowing down for this ghost object. The girl was saved by this false positive, probably not by the safety driver hitting the brakes. Uber does some interesting SDC research, but I would not feel safe being within 100 meters of any of their cars.