Robocars - Autonomous Drive, Self-driving, Driver-less cars

I doubt the car would have been out LIDAR/RADAR enabled. Obviously it's failed as it's intended to work in low light (or rather the algorithm that interprets the data has failed).

As mentioned LIDAR/RADAR is active (not passive) so the lighting conditions do not affect it.

To spell it out, the rumour is that LIDAR was disabled on purpose as they were conducting testing using passive cameras only (since a passive setup would be considerably cheaper than active LIDAR/RADAR). The test failed with the cost a human life.

If this turns out to be true it's going to be an even bigger shitstorm for Uber although I guess they'll just be throwing the safety driver under the bus.