Uber pulls its self-driving cars off the streets of San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO — In a rare occurrence, Uber submitted to California authorities and pulled its self-driving cars off the streets of San Francisco.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles on Wednesday revoked the registration of 16 Uber cars being used commercially as test vehicles for self-driving technology. Although each car had a human driver aboard, the cars are equipped with sophisticated technology that can drive the car without human input in many circumstances.

The DMV said Uber’s registrations were “improperly issued” because “they were not properly marked as test vehicles.”

Uber, which has long assumed a pugnacious approach to government regulation of its ride-hailing services, had ignored state requirements to apply for state permits that require permit holders to share data about crashes and other information.

Although about 20 other companies, including Tesla, Google and Mercedes-Benz, have been granted such permits, Uber argued that the law didn’t apply to its own self-drive technology, reasoning that because a human was needed to take control if the robot driver failed, its cars were not autonomous under state law.

The standoff received close media attention, partly because on the day Uber stood up to the DMV, a video of a self-driving Uber Volvo running a red light in San Francisco went viral.

On Wednesday, Jean Shiomoto, director of the DMV, sent a letter to Uber that said: “I appreciate the action that Uber has taken in the interest of public safe- ty.”

She also offered to personally help the company apply for required permits.

Although she wrote that the DMV supports the advancement of autonomous technologies, California has drawn criticism for issuing stricter self-driving regulations than some other states.

“We have stopped our selfdriving pilot in California as the DMV has revoked the registrations for our self-driving cars,” Uber said in a statement. “We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules.”

Uber did not say whether it would try to re-register its test vehicles in California, nor comment on whether it plans to seek permits or challenge the law in court.