Uber’s self-driving cars and trucks will quickly be jockeying for area on the streets of Washington, DC, with the ride-hailing company announcing it will start gathering information to support the advancement of its fleet of self-governing lorries. The vehicles will not be operating in autonomous mode, however. They will instead be operated by human motorists to start, gathering mapping data and recording driving scenarios which Uber’s engineers will then reproduce in simulation.
That said, the company hopes to ultimately permit its self-driving cars in Washington to, well, self-drive. “Our hope is that this preliminary of by hand driven information collection will lay the foundation for evaluating our vehicles in self-driving mode in Washington, DC,” the company’s Advanced Technologies Group said in a Medium post. “While we are thrilled about the possibilities, we stay dedicated to ensuring that every mile we drive on public roadways contributes safe and significant learnings to inform our development work.”
Uber has been approaching its self-driving tests with an abundance of care because a deadly crash in Tempe, Arizona, including one of its autonomous cars in March2018 The lorry, which only had one security driver behind the wheel, struck and eliminated 49- year-old Elaine Herzberg while she was walking her bike throughout the street.
After a prolonged examination, the National Transportation Safety Board divided the blame between Uber, the security chauffeur, the victim, and the state of Arizona in a blistering official report that also took the federal government to job for failing to correctly control the market. Uber settled a claim with Herzberg’s household for an undisclosed amount.
Checking formally resumed nine months after the crash, with the business’s Volvo SUVs running in a closed loop in downtown Pittsburgh, where Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group is headquartered. Uber is also gathering information in three other cities, including San Francisco, Dallas, and Toronto. However to date, it has yet to authorize autonomous screening in any of those cities aside from Pittsburgh. The company recently unveiled its third-generation automobile, which it prepares to start testing this year.
Uber isn’t the only business running self-driving automobiles in our nation’s capitol. Argo, the AV start-up backed by Ford and Volkswagen, has been testing its vehicles in DC given that2018
