The San Francisco-based ride-sharing company said Thursday that it will begin testing fully autonomous cars on Pittsburgh, Pa., streets, nine months after it suspended road-testing of its self-driving cars following a pedestrian fatality in Tempe, Ariz. Pittsburgh is the headquarters of Uber’s self-driving car operations.
Uber said it would begin testing its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh after getting the green light to resume the process from Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation. The company said it has spent much of 2018 working on improving the safety technology systems within its autonomous cars.
“Over the past nine months, we’ve made safety core to everything we do,” said Eric Meyhofer, Uber’s head of advanced technologies, in a statement posted on Medium.”This required a lot of introspection and took some time. Now we are ready to move forward.”
Meyhofer also said that in addition to bringing its self-driving cars back on the road in Pittsburgh, Uber would resume manual driving in San Francisco and Toronto. Manual driving involves a vehicle with self-driving technology built in, but with a driver in control of the car at all times. Meyhofer said Uber would bring self-driving cars back to San Francisco and Toronto only when it gets the OK from the proper authorities in those areas.
Uber pulled its self-driving cars from North America in April after a March accident involving one of its self-driving cars killed a pedestrian at night in Tempe. Uber closed down its self-driving operations in Arizona after the accident and laid off approximately 300 employees as a result.
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