Uber testing self-driving cars again in Pennsylvania

Nine months after one of its self-driving cars misidentified and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, Uber said it began testing on public roads in Pittsburgh again Thursday and is preparing to do the same in San Francisco and Toronto.

Uber’s technological and management problems — and their tragic consequences for a 49-yearold woman pushing a bike across a dark boulevard in Tempe, Ariz. — had presented policymakers and the broader self-driving industry with an almost perfect test case for an idea that is rarely articulated explicitly but hovers just beneath the surface for some driverless advocates.

Given the more than 37,000 people who die annually on U.S. roads — and the more than 1.3 million killed every year around the world — how many deaths are acceptable in the quest to build and popularize technologies to replace flawed human drivers?

The answer, it’s clear from Uber’s move Thursday, is greater than one, though how much greater remains to be seen.

Uber’s self-driving Volvo SUV detected Elaine Herzberg, who was crossing outside a sidewalk, six seconds before the fatal collision in March. But Uber’s technology classified her “as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path,” federal safety investigators said in a preliminary report.

Uber had also shut off the Volvo’s automatic emergency braking feature, since it complicated driverless testing. And its backup safety driver, whose job was to seize control when the technology failed, was streaming a singing competition on her smartphone ahead of the crash and didn’t try to slow down until after Herzberg was hit.

Uber spent the intervening months scouring its systems — software and human — for shortcomings, and says it has taken numerous steps to fix them before what it says is Thursday’s tightly limited relaunch.

Initially, only a “small handful of cars” will operate, and they will be limited to daylight hours on weekdays and to driving in the area between Uber sites in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, the company said, though those limits will loosen over time. And Uber said it will not pick up passengers in the vehicles “for the time being.”

Uber also said it has been putting its cars through tougher challenges on test tracks and better training new backup drivers after laying off old ones. There will be “realtime driver monitoring” during self-driving operations in Pittsburgh, it said. Cameras will also be trained on safety drivers as the vehicles are driven manually in San Francisco and Toronto to prepare for restarting autonomous testing in those cities.

Uber also said Volvo’s automatic emergency braking will be “activated at all times.”

Timothy McNulty, spokesman for Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, said the city and Uber “have been in regular communication about their safety upgrades and we’re pleased they sought the voluntary testing approval from the state.”

Most Americans in opinion surveys say they wouldn’t ride in a driverless car, a sentiment hardened among many by Uber’s fatality even as early self-driving leader Waymo launched a commercial service this month only miles from where Herzberg was killed.

SETH WENIG / ASSOCIATED PRESS Uber said it has been putting its cars through tougher challenges on test tracks and better training new backup drivers after laying off old ones.