It appeared to me that the human operator was looking down at her cell phone right before the accident.
However, the pedestrian was crossing in the middle of the road with no cross-walk.
Police chief says Uber ‘likely not’ at fault in pedestrian accident
The vehicle did have a human operator in the car, but it was in autonomous mode. The driver, Rafaela Vasquez, said that “it was like a flash,” when the person abruptly stepped out from a center median in front of the car.
?E?P?D? ☂️ on Twitter
A super-weird aspect of this crash site is that it occurred at a place where a beautiful brick-paved diagonal walking path was provided across the median, along with a sign instructing people not to use it. This is beyond pedestrian-hostile design; it’s damn-near entrapment.