Last week, ride-hailing service Uber saw its self-driving automobile initiative suffer a major setback, with one of its autonomous cars hitting and killing a pedestrian pushing a bicycle across a street in Arizona.

Fault has not yet been assigned, but it’s not looking good for Uber. The pedestrian was not at a crosswalk and therefore not expected to be in the road. There was a safety driver in the vehicle to prevent such accidents, but even if there hadn’t been, autonomous vehicle sensors are supposed to be able to spot unexpected hazards — and avoid them — just as well as they navigate expected pedestrians and vehicles.

Yes, it was a blow for Uber’s self-driving efforts. But was it also a blow to all other autonomous car technologies being developed by the likes of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL, NASDAQ:GOOG), General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)?

Google’s Waymo (Alphabet’s autonomous car project) chief John Krafcik says his company’s self-driving car technology would have avoided such a disaster. And, maybe it would have. Google stock holders who think the impending $127 billion autonomous car market is now Alphabet’s for the taking, however, may want to appreciate the dangerous power of association with a less-than-proven idea.

Unsurprisingly, the topic came up at this past weekend’s National Automobile Dealers Association meeting in Las Vegas. Krafcik, who was in attendance, explained at the event “…in the case of a pedestrian or a pedestrian with a bicycle, we have a lot of confidence that our technology would be robust and would be able to handle situations like that one.”

And, maybe he’s right.

Alphabet’s certainly got the technical chops in its corner. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has been a self-driving technology partner of the company’s for years now, and Google stock owners will recall that Intel acquired Mobileye a little over a year ago, beefing up its know-how in the sensor department.

Other, more finite data suggests the same. Case in point? Documents obtained by the New York Times found that Waymo’s autonomous cars only required human intervention for every 5,600 miles traveled in 2017. GM’s self-driving cars were only taken over by an actual driver every 1,250 miles. Uber’s autonomous cars, conversely, could only travel 13 miles (on average) before a human driver had to take the wheel.

It’s not clear is every Uber “disengagement” was a safety-related matter. Even if not though, the number of them is still alarmingly different than those needed by rival developers.

Underscoring the notion that implies Uber knows its technology is not up to snuff is the lawsuit between it and Waymo that was only settled a few days before the aforementioned accident.

All told, Uber agreed to pay Alphabet around $244 million for its use of Waymo-created LIDAR technologies that founds its way into Uber’s platform following the 2016 acquisition of self-driving truck outfit Otto. It was noteworthy because Otto’s founders were a couple of ex-Google employees who helped develop Waymo.

Still, access to that insight clearly wasn’t enough.

As for what kind of impact the matter may have on Google stock, it’s too soon to say.

If the accident serves as a wake-up call to all outfits developing self-driving cars and sends them all back to the proverbial drawing board so they can ensure it never happens again, then it may be forgiven and partially forgotten soon enough. And, as Raj Rajkumar, head of autonomous vehicle research at Carnegie Mellon University, recently commented, “All groups working in this space likely are having intensive meetings now, trying to find out what happened with the Uber system, and if they may have the same issue.”

Bottom Line for Google Stock

If Krafcik is so truly convinced that this sort of accident simply can’t happen with Waymo’s technology though, and then it does, that could be enough to set the self-driving car movement back to the tune of years.

Remember, most observers were already cautious following the mid-2017 death of a passenger in a car made by Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) while it was in “auto pilot” mode. Though he’d be warned by the vehicle several times to take the wheel, his death still thrust the whole idea of autonomous cars into a questionable light. Now the idea is even more questionable. It may not survive — at least as we know it today — a third high-profile death from a third developer.

That’s the biggest worry current and would-be owners of Google stock should be experiencing here.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.