Arizona’s Autonomous Vehicle Testing Suspended By Uber

Posted in Current News,Self-Driving Car Accidents on May 24, 2018

Effective May 23, 2018, Uber has decided to stop its self-driving car program in Arizona,  and  has announced that all of its test drivers have been terminated. The news was first reported by the Arizona Republic. The decision follows the death of a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, who was struck by an Uber vehicle in autonomous mode last March.

Tempe police later reported that the car didn’t slow down or swerve as the pedestrian appeared on the road and hit her at 38 mph.

Uber also temporarily halted its self-driving operations in all cities where it was testing its vehicles, including Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto, but plans to resume testing its autonomous vehicles in those locales once the preliminary report from the NTSB is done, which could take at least a year to complete.

Uber said it’s also pulling its driverless truck program from Arizona.

Though Uber’s self-driving program was suspended in California in 2016, the company is now in talks about autonomous-vehicle testing with  Governor Jerry Brown.