Uber shutting down self-driving operations in Arizona after fatal crash
Source: The Arizona Republic, at azcentral
Uber shutting down self-driving operations in Arizona after fatal crash
Ryan Randazzo, The Republic azcentral.com Published 9:06 a.m. MT May 23, 2018 Updated 11:26 a.m. MT May 23, 2018
Uber is shutting down its self-driving car tests in Arizona, where one of the cars was involved in a fatal crash with a pedestrian in March, the company said Wednesday. ... The company notified about 300 Arizona workers in the self-driving program that they were being terminated just before 9 a.m. Wednesday. The shutdown should take several weeks.
Test drivers for the autonomous cars have not worked since the accident in Tempe, but Uber said they continued to be paid. The company's self-driving trucks have also been shelved since the accident.
Uber plans to restart testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh once federal investigators conclude their inquiry into the Tempe crash. The company also said it is having discussions with California leaders to restart testing.
Uber has engineering hubs in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and the company said it is easier to test vehicles near those workers. Engineers from those hubs frequently traveled to Arizona to work on the testing project here.
Read more: Link to source
Uber Lays Off Hundreds Of Workers And Shuts Down Self-Driving Operation In Arizona Following Fatal Crash: Report
https://jalopnik.com/uber-lays-off-hundreds-of-workers-and-shuts-down-self-d-1826268528
Justin T. Westbrook
Today 3:26pm
Uber informed about 300 workers of their termination earlier today as part of plans to shut down its self-driving car testing program in Arizona following a fatal crash in March, where one of the companys test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian, according to The Arizona Republic.
The laid-off workers include safety drivers tasked with riding in and monitoring the self-driving test vehicles, according to the report. Ubers traditional ride-hailing service will not be effected.
Following the fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, where a self-driving Uber vehicle hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was crossing the street with her bicycle out of the cross-walk, Uber voluntarily pulled all of its self-driving test vehicle from public roads.
Once the federal investigation into the March crash is completed, Uber will resume its self-driving vehicle testing in Pittsburgh, which is closer to one of the companys engineering hubs. Heres more from Uber, via The Republic:
{snip}
Maggiemayhem
(811 posts)and has used driverless Uber many times. There is still a human in the passenger seat. If you are a female who is working late or bar hopping, driverless Ubers are recognizable by that spinning GPS device and nobody can pretend to be your Uber.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,881 posts)all cars have the right kind of software so that they can communicate with each other.
Pedestrians might still be a problem, however.
brush
(53,833 posts)have that software.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,881 posts)Probably at some point non driverless cars will be banned from the roads. I rather expect there will be a many years long phase in. Given how cheap computer technology has already become (my first computer had a 40meg harddrive and I was impressed. About three months after I bought it, it was upgraded to 80m for maybe $75. Recently I've bought thumb drives with some insane amount of memory for five dollars each) I suspect that older cars will be retro-fitted.
Perhaps fully manual cars will be confined to local roads only.
It may not happen in my lifetime. I'm 69. But it will probably happen within the lifetime of anyone under 40. And it could come sooner. We tend to underestimate how quickly technology advances.