An Uber self-driving car was involved in an unfortunate accident last week which led to the death of a pedestrian. The car struck a pedestrian early in the morning at around 40 miles per hour and the accident resulted in her death. While the investigation continues, Uber has grounded its entire fleet of self-driving cars until a conclusion is reached. NVIDIA has also decided to do the same. The company has halted its tests of self-driving car technology.
There was a safety driver behind the wheel of Uber’s car at the time of the accident but a video released by the police show that the driver might have been distracted moments before impact. Toyota decided to suspend its self-driving car tests in deference to the emotional effect of the accident on its safety drivers.
A report published recently revealed that there were problems with Uber’s self-driving car project long before the accident took place. However, the investigation is ongoing and no blame has been assigned just yet.
Reuters reports that NVIDIA has decided to suspend its self-driving tests globally after the fatal accident last week. It has been testing its technology in many countries including Japan, Germany, and the United States. It’s pertinent to mention here that Uber is a customer of NVIDIA as it uses the latter’s computing platform in its self-driving cars.
NVIDIA’s global fleet of manually driven data collection vehicles will continue to operate as the company learns more from the Uber incident before deciding when to put its self-driving test mules back on public roads.
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