After one of its cars fatally crashed into a pedestrian, Uber is shuttering its self-driving testing operations in Arizona. The company announced the decision in an internal memo today, sources told Recode.
Uber is shuttering its Arizona self-driving testing operations and laying off 300 test drivers
The company will continue to operate its self-driving efforts out of San Francisco and Pittsburgh.
Volvo
The company said it will continue to work on self-driving tech out of its advanced technology center in Pittsburgh, Penn., but will be laying off the 300 drivers who operated these semi-autonomous vehicles on public roads in Arizona.
“We’re committed to self-driving technology, and we look forward to returning to public roads in the near future,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “In the meantime, we remain focused on our top-to-bottom safety review, having brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us on our overall safety culture.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported the decision.
Arizona is just one of three locations Uber was testing its self-driving vehicles before temporarily halting all public testing in March. But in the days after the fatal crash, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey stopped all testing of any Uber semi-autonomous vehicle on public roads in the state indefinitely.
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The ride-hail company does not expect to be able to test its semi-autonomous vehicles in Arizona in the near future and is instead focusing on San Francisco and Pittsburgh. However, the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, has yet to determine whether the software, the vehicle operator or the pedestrian was at fault, so Uber has still not reconvened testing on public roads in any state.
In fact, the company decided against reapplying for a self-driving testing permit in California in March for this year.
However, the company’s internal investigation preliminarily concluded that the software detected Elaine Herzberg, the 47-year-old woman who was hit by a semi-autonomous Volvo operated by Uber, as she was crossing the street but decided not to stop right away. That’s in part because the technology was adjusted to be slower to react to objects in its path that may be “false positives” — such as a plastic bag.
Here’s more on what that means for Uber’s self-driving effort.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
