Uber’s self-driving fleet is back on the road after a car accident Friday night prompted the company to temporarily suspend them.
The ride-hailing company said Monday that its vehicles would hit the streets of San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Tempe, Ariz., by the end of the day and resume picking up paying riders in the latter two cities. A spokeswoman said Uber felt confident in returning the vehicles to the road after one of its self-driving Volvo XC90s was struck and overturned in Tempe on Friday evening.
There were no passengers in the back seat and no serious injuries were reported. The collision occurred when another vehicle failed to yield, an indication that the Uber vehicle was not at fault, according to police.
Uber has been quicker than most to put paying passengers inside its self-driving vehicles, even though it has been developing the technology for less time. Its vehicles always contain a safety engineer to take control when necessary, the company says.
Last August, Uber announced it would begin piloting self-driving vehicles with passengers in Pittsburgh. It acquired Otto, a self-driving technology company, that same month, and had already partnered with the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, which has long developed artificial intelligence technology. In December, Uber announced plans to test self-driving cars with passengers in Arizona after California regulators shut them down for not obtaining the proper permits. Uber has since gotten the permit and resumed testing in San Francisco.
Read the complete article in The Washington Post.
