The one thing that might have prevented Elaine Herzberg?s death still isn?t fixed One year ago this week, a distracted driver behind the wheel of an SUV struck and killed a 47-year-old woman as she attempted to walk across a street. The woman was Elaine Herzberg, and the SUV was a self-driving car operated by Uber.
Herzberg was one of 6,227 pedestrians killed last year on U.S. streets, but the only one to be killed by an autonomous vehicle. And even though the circumstances around this one woman?s death appears to be exceptional, in many ways, this was the most representative pedestrian fatality of 2018.
By almost every metric, streets got safer last year?except for people walking. Over the past 10 years, the number of pedestrian deaths has risen by over a third, according to the Governors Highway Safety Administration, which released preliminary 2018 data last month. Last year saw the highest number of pedestrians killed in the U.S. since 1990. Pedestrians now make up 18 percent of all traffic deaths; a decade ago they only made up 12 percent. Over the last year, it?s also become more clear that SUVs, which have a larger body and a higher carriage, are twice as likely to deliver fatal blows to pedestrians. New data shows the recent spike in pedestrian deaths tracks closely to a dramatic increase in sales of SUVs. The number of SUVs involved in pedestrian deaths has increased by 50 percent just in the last five years.

A smartphone?which drivers used 57 percent more o...