Uber suspends tests on self-driving cars after crash in Arizona

Uber has said it is suspending the testing of its self-driving vehicles after one of the vehicles was involved in a collision in Tempe, Arizona. The Uber vehicle, which was in self-driving mode, was not at fault in the accident, a police spokeswoman said.

Uber’s Volvo XC90 SUV was hit when another driver failed to yield, she said. The collision caused Uber’s vehicle to roll over on to its side. Neither driver suffered serious injuries.

"We are continuing to look into this incident and can confirm we had no back-seat passengers in the vehicle," Uber spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler said.

Kohler said Uber was suspending the testing of its self-driving vehicles in Arizona, pending the results of the investigation of the accident. She said Uber had also suspended testing in Pittsburgh and San Francisco for the day and possibly longer.

The incident comes at a difficult time for Uber, which for the last two months has fielded multiple crises involving the company’s workplace culture and business practices.

Earlier in March, the New York Times reported the existence of a tool called Greyball, which Uber engineers used to skirt authorities cracking down on Uber drivers worldwide. In addition, Travis Kalanick, Uber's chief executive, was forced to apologise for his aggressive behaviour after Bloomberg published video of a verbal altercation he had with an Uber driver.

Public testing

Although Uber was not at fault in the Arizona accident, the incident is problematic for the company, which has gone head-to-head with regulators as it has tried to persuade cities to allow public testing of its autonomous vehicles. Google, General Motors and Ford are all testing autonomous vehicles in California and have registered to do so.

After a successful introduction of the autonomous vehicle programme in Pittsburgh last year, Uber ran into obstacles in December when it tried to begin the testing of self-driving vehicles in San Francisco without registering for permits. The permits require companies to disclose the number of accidents their vehicles have been involved in.

Shortly after the San Francisco testing began, one of Uber’s self-driving cars failed to recognise a stoplight and sailed through a crosswalk. The car was driving itself at the time, according to internal documents reviewed by the Times.

After California’s motor vehicles department revoked the registrations for Uber’s self-driving cars, the company took its vehicles to Arizona for testing, where the governor did not require the company to seek autonomous testing permits.

Google, which has long tested self-driving vehicles in California, has also been in a number of accidents over the years. Typically, those accidents have been the fault of the other drivers.

Auto companies working on self-driving technology face the difficulty of building smarter vehicles that must not only adhere to the rules of the road but must also account for the error-prone nature of human drivers, a far more difficult variable.