Uber is suspending its autonomous vehicle testing program after one of its self-driving cars was involved in a crash in Arizona.
A car failed to yield to an Uber self-driving Volvo SUV and hit it, authorities said.
A photo of the accident, posted on Twitter by @fresconews user Mark Beach, shows the autonomous SUV on its side next to a another car with severe chassis damage and its windows shattered.
No serious injuries were reported.
BREAKING: Self-driving Uber vehicle on it’s side after a collision in Tempe, AZ.
Photos by @fresconews user Mark Beach pic.twitter.com/5NCF2KG0rW
— Fresco News (@fresconews) 25 de marzo de 2017
Uber is putting autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona on hold until it completes an investigation into the accident, according to a report by Bloomberg
It should be noted that the Uber SUV was not responsible for crash. The other car failed to yield to the autonomous SUV, causing the collision.
Tempe police information officer Josie Montenegro told Bloomberg News:
“There was a person behind the wheel [of the Uber vehicle].”
“It is uncertain at this time if they were controlling the vehicle at the time of the collision.”
An Uber spokesperson said that they are looking into the incident, confirming that there were no backseat passengers in the vehicle.
This is not the first self-driving hiccup for Uber
The ride-hailing company started testing its autonomous vehicles in Tempe last month after it was banned from testing its autonomous cars in San Francisco.
In quite an embarassing development for Uber, it was reported that its autonomous vehicles were inolved in traffic violations, and it was later revealed that the violations by Uber’s self-driving cars were caused by an issue with the cars’ mapping programs, despite previous claims by the company that the violations were a result of human error. To make matters worse, this occured after California state regulators requested that Uber cease its autonomous testing operations.
