If the safe operation of a driverless vehicle depends on the sensors having full coverage (it does), then there should be a routine and required procedure to test them. Such as a BIT when the car is started, or a software feature that disables auto drive mode if nothing is detected by a given sensor within a defined quantity of time or distance covered.
It will be really, really dumb if it turns out this car had a faulty sensor that wasn’t detected by software.
So true.
And if this car was a participant in some form of beta testing, there should be multiple tests of the features being evaluated. And the human back up should have been a trained engineer with capability to handle instant full control of the vehicle. (The driver was clearly not paying attention at this critical time.)
And, was the car tested at night on the track to verify it could detect and take appropriate action before it went on the live highway? Shame on UBER.
They will deserve everything that is thrown at them in this debacle. (Personally they deserve to be out of the automatic control business.)