"Because we feel the incident may have an emotional effect on our test drivers, we have decided to temporarily pause our Chauffeur mode testing on public roads," spokesman Brian Lyons said in an emailed statement, referring to its hands-off testing mode. The carmaker said it could not speculate on the cause of the crash or what it may mean to the future of the nascent automated driving sector.
Toyota, whose North American headquarters is in Plano, had been doing on-road testing with self-driving vehicles in Michigan and California, Lyons said. The company has kept the number of vehicles small so they could be rapidly updated as the technology advances, he said, declining to name a specific number of self-driving vehicles in operation.
Prior to the incident, Toyota had been working on a plan to team up with Uber on autonomous driving. Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive officer of Uber, posted a photo on Twitter with Toyota President Akio Toyoda at the automaker's headquarters last month, though details on the collaboration have been slim.
Lyons said Tuesday that its self-driving unit, Toyota Research Institute, "does not have first-hand information on the tragic traffic fatality." A Toyota spokesman said last week the automaker hadn't yet decided whether to buy Uber's driverless-car software.
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