it's the hardest problem in technology, and one that could change everything. this week, we're in arizona, the self—driving capital of the world, to ride in the latest robotic vehicles. meet the people who are not happy to see them... what am i going to do then? stand in line for food? ..and to find out what happens when the tech goes wrong. when california told uber that there were going to be some new regulations they needed to adhere to, governor ducey in a public announcement said... california may not want you, we want you to know that arizona does. we are a state that is open for business. we are a state that welcomes business and new people and technology. our governor, governor ducey, had basically opened wide - the arms of our state . to welcome them there and it was a no—brainer. chandler is a hub where - autonomous vehicles are growing and having more miles mapped on our roads than any place - else in the galaxy. it's kind great to bel in the centre of that. chandler, i believe, was chosen because it has very wide streets, it has very clean streets, they're on a grid. and the people would be very accepting of this kind of technology. and so it was that the technology that will one day change our society, our landscape and our lives, found a home in arizona. the makers of self—driving cars have flocked to the town of chandler, which has fast become the industry's test—bed. today, i'm taking a ride in one of the most prolific types of self—driving cars here made by google�*s subsidiary, waymo. now, self—driving cars come kitted with loads of sensors so they can see in every direction and sometimes in ways that we can't with our eyes. on top, we've got loads of normal cameras looking in every direction. and the fact there's loads of them means they can judge distances by seeing how different objects move in relation to each other. there's also radar, four of those, one on each corner, and these spinning things are the really interesting things. these are lidar sensors, there are five around and a big one in the black bump on the top, which can see three football pitches ahead and behind. right, let's go for a ride. we have our safety driver. and away we go. please remember to. buckle your seat belt. we've just pulled out in front of quite a fast—moving car there. we made it. i'd call that quite a human manoeuvre. companies like waymo are experimenting whether their technology can avoid hitting you. i mean, that's the experiment. when you go out on the streets here, or when you cross at a crosswalk, and there's a waymo, it is actively testing whether or not its cars can avoid an accident and avoid an accident with you if you happen to be on the roads. and some people also are clearly offended by that notion. in fact, some residents have reacted very strongly indeed. reporter: check out this video we found on youtube showing l a man attacking a self—driving car. you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people that see these cars on the road everyday, but there have been some folks who really don't like them and have either tried to run them off the road with their own cars or thrown rocks at them. one man drew a gun and aimed it at the safety driver as the car passed by his driveway. so some people really have a problem with this amount of technology sharing the roads with them and kind of cruising through their neighbourhoods at all hours of the day. but a lot of these incidents are not when the car cut someone off in traffic, or the things that would maybe make another driver mad at me. it's just their presence, it's just the fact that they're there, that seems to really set people off and you know, in some instances, it's not even people who are driving. it's people riding their bike or walking that throw a rock at them or run out and slash a tyre whilst one is stopped at a stop sign, so frankly, i can't tell you what's going on in their minds, because i would never run out and slash someone�*s tyre, you know, for no reason. but there is just something deeply offensive about this technology and how ubiquitous it is in this part of arizona. in the last three years, we responded to about two dozen incidents were people have taken some type of action against the vehicle or the vehicle and driver, where this could have been what we classify as maybe a road rage, where someone may confront the vehicle and yell at the driver. we've had incidents of criminal damage where people have thrown rocks at the vehicles, we've had one particular incident where a person in the neighbourhood actually pointed a gun, pointed a pistol at the vehicle. probably the number—one frustration is that waymo vehicles being safe, being prudent and following the law, and there are people who get frustrated by that. so there are plenty of people in a hurry and plenty of people that go above the speed limit or make improper turns or whatever the violation is, and sometimes, people have been annoyed at the vehicle actually going the speed limit and driving correctly. in chandler, there is the same mix of excitement and concern about self—driving cars that we've seen everywhere. the difference is, for these people, it's happening right in front of them, right now. it's big money saying, "hey, listen, this is cool, - this is new, i'm surej you would like this," because you see it and it's. fascinating, but at the same time, you're costing - people theirjobs and people who are taken care of their. families, but you'd rather see something cool and be in this new age ratheri than a still care - about the people that actually this affects. and we're lost if you | think like that, man. you're lost. i absolutely would go into self—driving vehicle. i mean, i think that it's such a cool experience. this is something you would see on tv when you were a kid in old �*90s movies of self—driving cars, and the fact that it's actually here and at our fingertips and think it's incredible. lyft drivers are going to lose theirjobs, cab drivers will lose theirjobs, are not only will they lose theirjobs, i promise you, they're going to try and figure out a way to make machines create these cars, so they're not even going to let humans create the cars. trust a machine with my children's lives...? - i don't know if i- could do that or not. and last year, the fears of the community became a reality. a self—driving uber vehicle failed to detect her crossing an empty road at night, and the safety driver failed to hit the brakes. it was the first case of a pedestrian being killed by a self—driving car. the uber was, the vehicle was a volvo again, it was a self—driving vehicle. it was in the autonomous mode at the time. and our investigation did not show, at this time, that there were significant signs of the vehicle slowing down. the uber vehicle hit elaine herzberg at 38 miles an hour. this was a huge moment for the burgeoning industry, which led to uber having to immediately halt their self—driving programme. so what exactly happened? and whose fault was it? we went to the site of the crash in tempe, arizona with the news editor of the phoenix new times, ray stern, to find out more about the incident. ok, it's on the other side. she took her bike from this area, walked it across this lane, and then entered this lane. the uber vehicle was in this lane. and itjust kept staying in this lane — even though the pedestrian is here. it should have swerved, it had time and place to swerve, but it didn't. so before she made it to the sidewalk, it impacted her. i absolutely would have seen elaine as she started to cross the road, and i would have absolutely braked for her — most reasonable drivers would have. in fact, any driver who was paying attention would have not hit elaine herzberg. in order to entice uber and other companies into arizona, governor ducey had relaxed regulations, which meant companies faced no requirement to disclose anything about their programmes, including crashes. basically, the governor invited uber in, that was one problem. they were operating here without any real transparency, in terms of what they were actually doing, when the vehicles were in autonomous mode, what their criteria were for it. and then so, the vehicles were doing anything they wanted and uber had free reign. tempe police called the crash entirely avoidable, after investigations found that the safety driver was watching television on her phone at the time of the fatal incident. miss vasquez could still face charges of the vehicular manslaughter. she looked down, they estimate, 160 times during the circuit that she was doing, the evidence showed that we she was streaming the view, which is a tv show, on her phone at the exact time of the impact. so what exactly went wrong with uber�*s self—driving technology on that night? it can't really be to do with poor visibility, can it? one of the messed up things about this whole accident has been the video that was released by uber after the accident. and if you've seen this video, it looks like the street is very dark and then, at last second, the woman on the bike suddenly pops out of the darkness right before the impact. in fact, this area is not as dark as that video shows. this drive—through at night follows the same route as the uber vehicle. it shows that the street lighting makes the road clearly visible, far into the distance. the new york times reported that uber were not living up to expectations before the crash. as of march 2018, uber were struggling to meet their target of 13 miles per intervention in arizona. as a comparison, gm—owned cruise reported to california regulators that they went more than 1,200 miles per intervention, and waymo said that their california test cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before driver intervention. reports said that the uber vehicle actually detected elaine herzberg six seconds before the crash, but the perception system got confused, classifying her as first an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and finally as a bicycle. those volvos came from the factory with an accident avoidance system, one of these new semi—autonomous features that a lot of the new cars have. 1.3 seconds before impact, the self—driving system realised emergency braking was needed. however, uber had disabled the emergency braking system on the volvo to prevent conflict with the self—driving system. nevertheless, prosecutors have determined that uber were not criminally liable in the death. if uber had not disabled that technology, then potentially the vehicle would have detected the pedestrian, even without the uber autonomous technology. just with the volvo technology, and stopped the vehicle. but uber disconnected that, because apparently the vehicle was being a little too jerky in its motions, and it did notjive correctly with the autonomous vehicle system that uber had in there. a safety driver supervising an imperfect system should ensure its overall safety. however, that only works if they're paying attention. with self—driving cars being tested live on busy streets, accidents are inevitable. so this may not be the last incident that we see on the road to a driverless future. but the number of accidents involving self—driving cars is very low for the millions of miles of testing that have taken place. if there's an opportunity to help keep our roadways safe, that's certainly our responsibility and our mission to keep our community safe and obviously our roads. so if we can reduce the number of collisions and people being injured and killed, by leveraging new technology, it's something we certainly want to explore and support as we move forward, because we know that overwhelming majority of collisions are preventable, they are caused by humans. we are just not able to sharel in the way that these vehicles are, i don't have access to ten billion driven miles. _ which in the future, - these vehicles will have, every oddity that happened to i be disseminated across a fleet. i want a world where a fender. bender in copenhagen improves someone safety in a mine i in cape town that afternoon. in a way that we just don't as humans. i in 2017, national statistics showed that over 10,000 people were killed because of impaired drivers. over 300,000 people nationally are affected every single day because of impaired driving. two out of three people are going to be affected at some point in their lifetime across this country, and when we think about self—driving technology, the reason we're so excited about this is because if we can take that number of 10,000 people, and drop it by one, 9,999 because of this technology, that's what we want and that's what we strive for. and it's notjust the added safety. there are many people who will be empowered and mobilised by self—driving cars. the biggest challenges for people when they think about giving up their keys and getting rid of the car and not driving any more is that loss of independence. so self—driving car technology, for people to be a to maintain that dignity and independence to go where they want to go when they want to go, is tremendous. to not have to rely on somebody else — when you start talking about the senior population, that sense of pride and independence is very, very strong. so to try to take that away from somebody is a really difficult situation. we have large communities here where people have come to retire and at some point, they're going to need to turn in those keys. and be off our roads. so that is certainly a force. other people with impairments, whether blindness or things that would keep them from being able to drive. if you have a c—section i ora hysterectomy, "no, i'm sorry, you can't drive." there are just nuts things that are out there. - because we haven't changed how we drive in 100 years. _ it's got to change. it's not ok. let alone the safety stuff. so mobility of people, - the aged, the young, the ill. we want to stay mobile, right? autonomous cars, then, certainly have the power to change lives and save lives when the technology eventually becomes reliable. and when it becomes socially acceptable. butjust over the horizon, there are other vehicles which may be driving themselves about even sooner. trucks are highway vehicles. and when they do stray towards populated areas, it's usually on the outskirts, moving from depot to depot. so unlike autonomous cars, lidar sensors are not the key to these robo—rigs. it's these, long—range cameras. you might recognise we have two lidars on the system, but most importantly for our vehicle, we have a camera array, this primary sensors are cameras because this is a large truck, we need to see a great distance. this vehicle can perceive obstacles at 1,000 metres away, well over half a mile from the vehicle. we also have side—facing cameras which are used on surface streets, conducting unprotected left and right turns as a primary sensor. further back, we have cameras that are giving us close surveillance of the lanes around us, that enhances what the lidar is also seeing and we have cameras that are looking behind the vehicle and at the trailer. all of these sensors combined create a long—range vision system for the truck that helps it to detect the object's speed, trajectory and can even work out its intent. at 1,000 metres, an autonomous truck could have up to 35 seconds of reaction time. and if you're expecting some high—tech controls in the cab... well, you may be surprised. this is probably the most important button in the vehicle. this enables autonomous mode. so, when we reach a point where the vehicle is ready to go autonomous, the button is pressed, and off we go. now, these trucks are not the largest autonomous vehicles being driven in arizona. they have some big competition. mind—bogglingly huge mining vehicles from the likes of cat and komatsu are driving themselves through huge quarries. an autonomous truck needs three systems to drive. perception system consists of radar, lidar on the top, and then a positioning system which is an inner unit measuring unit, gps, tied together by the planning system to drive the truck. the best way to avoid an obstacle is to never get close enough to actually come in contact with it at speed, so pick it up at a very long range and then verify and correct it at what we calla mid—range, well within stopping distance. so how fast can we going this thing? this truck is capable of going 40 mph. oh, my word. and we are really wanging it round the corners as well! it's not shy about cornering! once we are loaded, it's a whole different track as well. you have 400 tonnes, carrying around. right. and is the vehicle aware that it's loaded and it drives differently? correct. but the trucking and mining industries are huge employers, so self—driving technology will inevitably lead to significant job losses. autonomous trucks are safer than human operators, - a couple of reasons why. they don't fatigue, they do exactly what we tell them i to do, and they do it the same way over and over and over. . people is actually a pretty big cost in the economics. - when you think about one truck running continuously for 24 - hours needs 4.5 operators, it's actually quite a large cost. - you have food cost, camp costs, travel costs. - so when you're flying - in hundreds of thousands of people every single week, that starts to add up. - no—one wants to eliminate a job, we want to find - a different rolei for that person. we just completed a run with the us postal service. it's a 2,100 mile round trip that we executed autonomously. self—driving trucks aren't bound by a human driver's hours of service regulations. human drivers can only drive so many hours per day and then they must take a rest break. self—driving vehicles will be safer than human drivers. they don't sleep, they don't drink, they don't get distracted. this is a crucial element of autonomy. since there is such a shortage of drivers now, we believe that this technology will be applied first to address the shortage. we think there are going to be plenty of opportunities for human drivers for the foreseeable future. so how do truckers feel about theirjobs being threatened by self—driving rigs? you ask any truck driver, they don't want to be behind a nine to 5 desk, somebody telling them what to do, pick up that, do that, do this. if you are in a truck, eight hours a day, you are driving, you're by yourself. listen to your music. you've got peace. there was an accident here in town of a car, self—driving car, so how catastrophic it would be with a truck if something went wrong? what i going to do then? stand in line for food? that's what it's coming to. and you know it is. i'm kind of sceptical. to see how the safety rating is going to be. but i know that they have been testing it and so far, so good. it's not going to happen completely, and get people out ofjobs. no. there's always going to be human beings driving the trucks. have you ever known a machine that can go down the highway . or function right? they don't always work, it's true. no, it doesn't work. look at the accidents that have happened already. l need i say more? but let's not get ahead of ourselves. these drivers almost certainly have a while yet before theirjobs disappear. while the advancements that we've seen in the last few years are more than impressive, getting a computer to fully understand the real world and drive safely through it, will be a monumental achievement. they're not saying that it's done, because it's not. this is not a solved problem. this is a hard problem. it is many years before you can buy a car that has no steering wheel, and you can say i will have a car with no windscreen and it has the same functionality as your car does now. to start with, they will have subhuman capacity and superhuman capacity in other things. subhuman in their ability to reason about all the extraordinary things that can happen on a road that's got nothing to do with driving. superhuman in their ability to concentrate and never, ever, ever get distracted. to see in ways that humans don't see with radar and laser, to sense distance. extraordinary things. and above all, the ability for these vehicles to share and acquire competencies, not because of their own experience but because of the experience of other vehicles everywhere else in the world. that's an extraordinary thing and that is the compelling reason why these vehicles are coming. they will be better than us because there's nothing in our evolutionary history that makes us good at controlling a tonne and a half of metal at 70 miles an hour. here in arizona, i have seen the benefits of and the resistance to the idea of the machines taking over another part of our lives. so i think the question is not if, or when, this will happen. but will we let it? all eyes on the weather now that lockdown is slowly easing and it is not looking too bad over the next few days. it will remain a little on the chilly side and we are in for a frosty start on tuesday but it will be a sunny one. on tuesday there are still a lot of cold air across the continent and we are in that cold air, it is still coming from the arctic and will take a while before the things warm up. this is what like early on tuesday. as low as —8 celsius in the glens of scotland and a frost down to the south coast. plenty of sunshine around right from the word go, however the cloud will be increasing through the morning and into the afternoon across western and southern areas so it is not a completely dry day. we do expect a few showers. the best of the weather will be across central parts and towards the north sea coast. temperatures, 10—12 degrees, actually not that far off the average but we would like them closer to the mid— teens especially across southern parts of the uk and at least into double figures in most areas. so the next few days? the weather will remain dry because we have high pressure centred across the uk. notjust across the uk but spreading itself right across western parts of europe. a lot of dry weather in many areas and this is what it looks like early on wednesday. starting a little misty in places with a touch of frost but in the afternoon the weather looks fine. maybe a couple of light showers here and there. the temperature nudging into the mid— teens across southern parts of wales, for example. this is a look at thursday. it does look as though it will pick up more of a breeze off the north sea here around east anglia and the south east, so the temperatures may drop a little bit. we're only talking nine in norwich and in london so the higher temperatures later in the week will be across more western areas of the uk. there is a hint that things are going to be warming up as we head into the weekend. see that cold air being pushed away and that slightly milder atlantic wind sets in across the british isles but not everywhere. so temperatures will pick up towards the weekend and the best temperatures will be across more western areas. and as you can see from the weather symbols it does look generally dry. bye— bye. welcome to bbc news. our top stories: a state of emergency and overnight curfew in minneapolis after protests at the shooting dead of another black american by police. the local police chief says it was an accident. during this encounter, however, the officer drew their handgun instead of their taser. india's biggest religious festival continues despite more infections than anywhere outside america, the world health organisation warns the pandemic has yet to reach its global peak. the trajectory of the pandemic right now, it is growing exponentially. this is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic. with brazil's hospitals overwhelmed, victims families say the crisis there is now a public health disaster. and princes william and harry pay tribute

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