It has been over a month since Uber grounded its entire fleet of self-driving cars following an accident in Tempe, Arizona in which one of its self-driving cars struck down a pedestrian. It was the first known fatal accident involving an autonomous cars and the investigation is still ongoing. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has now said that the company will likely start testing its self-driving cars on public roads once again “in a few months.”
Once it had grounded its entire fleet of self-driving cars, the company said that it would wait for the preliminary report from federal traffic investigators before deciding when to restart the testing program.
It appears that Uber will soon put the cars on public roads once again. Khosrowshahi said that he expects Uber will roll out the cars once again after the National Traffic Safety Board’s report comes out and after the “top-to-bottom” internal safety review being conducted by the company is completed.
The findings of the report will certainly have an impact on how Uber proceeds with its self-driving car tests. A recent report suggested that Uber’s autonomous driving software had been tuned in such a way that it essentially decided on its own that it didn’t need to take evasive action. It had probably flagged the incident as a “false positive.”
Khosrowshahi said that Uber has been working “hand in hand” with the NTSB, it has cooperated with the authorities throughout the investigation as well.
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