Uber’s self-driving cars back on roads less than year after fatal accident
Uber’s self-driving cars are back on the road less than a year after a fatal accident curbed the testing program.
The vehicles are back on the road in Pittsburgh for a pilot program nine months after one of its self-driving cars fatally struck a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., according to Reuters. Pennsylvania gave Uber permission to resume testing.
{mosads}“Over the past nine months, we’ve made safety core to everything we do,” Eric Meyhofer, Uber’s head of advanced technologies, said in a statement posted on Medium. “This required a lot of introspection and took some time. Now we are ready to move forward.”
Two vehicles are being tested in Pittsburgh on a one-mile loop in the city, with more expected to be added in the coming months. The cars will have two safety drivers in them at all times.
In addition to the self-driving testing in Pittsburgh, Meyhofer said Uber would begin manual driving testing in San Francisco and Toronto. Manual driving is a step below self-driving cars, where a driver is in control of a vehicle with self-driving technology.
Uber put a stop to its self-driving car program in April, a month after the fatal March accident. The driver behind the wheel of the car was streaming a show on her phone when the accident occurred.
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