Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Arizona Suspends Uber's Self Driving Vehicle Testing

The Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, who had chided California for its strict rules on testing of self-driving vehicles, has suspended Uber's self driving vehicle privileges in that state in the wake of the death of a pedestrian, killed by an Uber self-driving vehicle. According to Ducey, the death was an "unquestionable failure" to comply with the expectation that public safety would be a top priority for those operating self-driving cars. The shift comes as others in the self-driving car industry, including Intel's MobileEye self driving car unit, have said that Uber's systems should have detected the pedestrian earlier, in enough time to brake and prevent the death. Uber moved all of its self-driving vehicles to Arizona in December of 2016, after California revoked Uber's self driving vehicle permits on reports of Uber's vehicles running red lights in San Francisco. The suspension is an abrupt about-face for Ducey, who had said that California was "putting the brakes on innovation" for its rules around self driving cars.