S1E4: The Fault In Our Cars
Slate Technology
Slate
4.6 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2018
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The first pedestrian killed by a car in the western hemisphere was on New York’s Upper West Side in 1899. One newspaper warned that “the automobile has tasted blood.” Today, driverless cars present their own mix of technological promise and potential danger. Can the reaction to that 1899 pedestrian tragedy help us navigate current arguments about safety, blame, commerce, and public space? Guests include: Missy Cummings, Navy fighter pilot and head of the Duke Humans and Autonomy Lab.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | There was a car accident in Tempe, Arizona, back in March of this year. |
| 0:07.0 | It was about 10 o'clock at night, and a woman was walking her bike across the street, and |
| 0:11.0 | an SUV going about 40 miles an hour hit her, and it killed her. |
| 0:16.0 | The loss of life is always a tragedy. |
| 0:18.0 | But if the story ended right there, it wouldn't be especially notable |
| 0:21.6 | because about 6,000 pedestrians get killed every year in the U.S. alone. There was something new |
| 0:27.6 | about this accident, though. The person who's in the driver's seat of the SUV didn't have her hands |
| 0:32.3 | on the wheel, she didn't have her feet on the pedals, and she was barely even looking at the road |
| 0:36.6 | because this |
| 0:37.7 | was an experimental self-driving vehicle, which made this accident in Tempe the very first |
| 0:44.8 | of its kind, a pedestrian killed by an autonomous car. It was all over the national news. |
| 0:49.9 | ...before an Uber self-driving car crashes in a new of a lot of women, and it was all captured on Uber's... |
| 0:55.0 | It used to be distracted when all of this goes down. |
| 1:01.5 | The family of the woman who was killed immediately sued Uber, the company that owned and operated that vehicle. |
| 1:07.6 | Uber pulled all its driverless cars off the road in Tempe and in other cities. |
| 1:12.1 | And suddenly this technology that we've been talking about with a lot of optimism, |
| 1:16.4 | the idea that it would improve mobility, it would transform our cities, and it would be environmentally superior. |
| 1:21.7 | So now suddenly people are arguing about it with this undercurrent of fear and blame. |
| 1:26.7 | And it's very reminiscent of a similar moment |
| 1:29.2 | 120 years ago when a different new technology that was poised to transform our roads |
| 1:34.5 | got tied up with tragedy. |
| 1:39.6 | From Slate, I'm Seth Stevenson. From The Economist, I'm Tom Standage. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.