This terrible accident happened on March 19, 2018, late in the night. An Uber self-driving car, running in autonomous mode with a safety driver behind its wheel, hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. You can find the detailed investigation results here. From the dash-cam and internal driver-seat camera footages, the accident happened on a poorly lit road with a speed limit of 40 mph. The safety driver was watching her cellphone （possibly watching Hulu) right before the car hit the woman.

Before we dive deep into the potential flaws of a self-driving system, we need to acknowledge that self-driving car is actually the most-advanced application of AI that's is the closest to AGI(Artificial General Intelligence). Driving is a very complex and potentially quite dangerous act. The environment a self-driving car has to deal with could be very complicated that require all kinds of situation awareness: other cars, pedestrians, bikes, traffic signals, signs, weather, road situation, etc. It's true that we've made great progress on artificial intelligence these years, but are we good enough for this task? No matter the answer, we need to do all we can and explore all the possibilities we are aware of, no stone unturned.

A Tesla Model S electric vehicle is shown in San Francisco, California, U.S., April 7, 2016. The first U.S. fatality using self-driving technology took place in May when the driver of a Tesla S sports car operating the vehicle's "Autopilot" automated driving system died after a collision with a truck in Florida, federal officials said Thursday. The government is investigating the design and performance of Tesla's system. Tesla said on its website that neither the driver nor the Autopilot noticed the white side of the trailer, which was perpendicular to the Model S, against the brightly lit sky, and neither applied the brakes. "The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer," the company said.

Google has patented a new "sticky" technology to protect pedestrians if – or when – they get struck by the company's self-driving cars. The patent, which was granted on 17 May, is for a sticky adhesive layer on the front end of a vehicle, which would aim to reduce the damage caused when a pedestrian hit by a car is flung into other vehicles or scenery. Related: Google's self-driving car: How does it work and when can we drive one? "Ideally, the adhesive coating on the front portion of the vehicle may be activated on contact and will be able to adhere to the pedestrian nearly instantaneously," according to the patent description. "This instantaneous or nearly-instantaneous action may help to constrain the movement of the pedestrian, who may be carried on the front end of the vehicle until the driver of the vehicle (or the vehicle itself in the case of an autonomous vehicle) reacts to the incident and applies the brakes."