Wouldn't one typically press both charges? Wrongful death to allow the family to be compensated, corporate manslaughter to punish the company and incentivize not killing people tomorrow. It doesn't seem like it's necessary to choose the non-criminal case.

To state the obvious, I am not a lawyer.

Civil suits are intended to serve both purposes - compensation and deterrent (punitive vs compensatory damages). E.g. if you sue a company for doing you damage, the compensatory damages are based only on the injury you suffered, but punitive damages' presence and severity is affected by things like the level of negligence of the company.

The theoretical difference with criminal charges is that criminal charges deal with harms to the difference sovereign (ie the state and the public) that need to be punished regardless of the wishes of the immediate victim. e.g. you're not allowed to settle a murder charge out of court.

It depends on the details of the case. (IANAL either.)

Criminal law applies to criminal acts. It's possible for do something wrong that "injures" someone (physically or in some other way) without committing a crime.

Criminality generally requires wrongful intent. If you simply screwed up while otherwise obeying the law then you haven't committed a crime (negligence can be a crime, e.g. if you are more careless than a "reasonable man" would be this is in itself a form of bad intent -- so swinging swords around in public places while blind-folded isn't OK).

Also, tort law has a different standard of proof -- it is resolved based on preponderance of evidence rather than proof beyond reasonable doubt, so there's a lower bar than for throwing someone in jail.

Oh, and it's harder to prove criminal charges against nebulous entities. (Who's the criminal in this case? Uber's CEO? The head of the software team? The person who gave uber a permit to test their crap on public streets?)

Uber's overall conduct might approach the point of "criminal enterprise" at which point RICO statutes might be invoked. Not likely though.

The definition of manslaughter varies between states, and I am not a lawyer, but in general, criminal manslaughter charges only apply if there is an element of extreme negligence or doing something unlawful (like driving in an illegal manner) and causing a death.

For instance, there are accidents that cause deaths all the time; but they would only be prosecuted as manslaughter if someone were doing something considered inherently unsafe and unlawful.

If you run a red light, and kill someone in the process, it's possible you could be prosecuted for manslaughter, though even then you might not be if there could have been extenuating circumstances (sun in your eyes, etc).

In this case, there would only be a chance of a manslaughter charge if Uber were somehow being particularly negligent. In this case, it sounds like there was a human operator in the car, though the car was in autonomous mode. It's possible that the operator wasn't paying the attention that he or she should have been, or it's possible that even the human operator didn't see the pedestrian in time. It mentions that the pedestrian was crossing outside of any crosswalk, so it's possible that this was a tragic accident of them trying to cross a street with traffic without having been sufficiently careful.

On the other hand, it mentions a bicycle, but also says the victim was walking, which I find odd:

  "Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking outside the crosswalk on a four-lane 
  road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 p.m. MST Sunday (0400 GMT 
  Monday) when she was struck by the Uber vehicle, police said." 

  Local television footage of the scene showed a crumpled bike and a Volvo 
  XC90 SUV with a smashed-in front. It was unknown whether Herzberg was on 
  foot or on a bike.

Anyhow, it is relatively uncommon for drivers to be charged with manslaughter in this country; they generally have to be doing something quite egregious, like driving drunk or driving at 90 in a 30 mph zone. Most of the time, the response to people being killed in traffic accidents is just that accidents happen.

Unless the operator was being particularly negligent, or there was some serious and known problem with the self driving car but it was put on the road anyhow, I doubt any manslaughter charges will be filed.

Remember, Arizona has explicitly been encouraging the testing of self-driving cars, so I expect that testing a self driving car, with an operator to take over in cases which it can't handle, would not be considered unlawful or extremely negligent. Maybe what the operator was doing could be, but we'd need more information before it would be possible to tell.

> On the other hand, it mentions a bicycle, but also says the victim was walking, which I find odd

The police clarified that the victim was walking her bike across the street: https://twitter.com/AngieKoehle/status/975824484409077760