The 'average' accident rate of 1 in 86 million miles can be thought of as the probability of an accident happening. One good driver may go 200 million miles without an accident. Another good driver may drive only 10 miles and have an accident. A single accident occurring after 20 or even 500 million miles means (no pun intended) essentially nothing. An average over many accidents of 20 million miles would be cause for alarm. Regardless, Uber does seem to be taking this accident seriously. P.S. If driving, I could not have reacted quickly enough to avoid this tragedy.

The 'leaked' paper assumes a non-Quantum Theory -- a 'pilot wave' hypothesis to explain how their device might work. Quantum Theory has been tested repeatedly and found to accurately describe how the universe seems to be. No, I don't understand it, but transistors and lasers and so much more have resulted from Quantum mechanics. Scientific papers are peer reviewed by other scientists prior to publishing, and that is usually a good thing. A hallmark of science is test repeatability. Maybe this paper was rejected by the authors' peers and that's the reason they 'leaked' it. Now perhaps another curious scientist will replicate the experiment while eliminating some sources of error. Those results will help validate or repudiate the claims made in the leaked paper.

Humans seem to have little ability in understanding vocalizations of other animals. Many animals other than humans are clearly able to learn and understand some of our utterances. How would you know if an elephant, parrot, dolphin or some other equally bright and likely sentient animal 'specifically asks' you not to eat it?

I live near Puget Sound - the home of the giant pacific octopus. They are easily found for sale on the docks or at local fish markets. I learned about octopus intelligence over 20 years ago and so quit dining on it. I couldn't bring myself to eating a creature that is likely to be scentiant. (M.S. Biology)

WOW! I am blown away! I just read the full UW News release. This is incredible. Graduated in 1979, and this was a sci-fi idea then. Congrads to all involved!