After suspension, Uber self-driving cars resume

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Uber says its self-driving cars are no longer suspended in Pittsburgh after a crash over the weekend.

The company also had grounded self-driving cars in Arizona and in San Francisco over the weekend – but they resumed operating in both places Monday as well.

The difference between the California program versus the ones in Arizona and Pennsylvania is that California does not allow passengers to ride in the vehicles.

The company said Monday it paused operations over the weekend to better understand what happened in Arizona, but feels confident in returning the cars to the road.

There were no serious injuries reported in the incident in Tempe, Ariz., on Friday night. Police said the self-driving Uber SUV was obeying the law while the human driver of the other car was cited for a moving violation.

Uber says it is investigating the incident and that there were no passengers in the back seat of the self-driving car.

Multiple automakers and technology companies are testing fleets of self-driving vehicles. In nearly all cases, the cars have backup drivers who can take the wheel in an emergency.

Testing hasn’t been accident-free. Waymo – a division of Google – has been testing self-driving cars since 2009 and has driven them more than 2 million miles. Last year, Waymo reported 13 accidents involving its fleet in the state of California, which requires companies testing autonomous vehicles to report any accidents. Most of the accidents were minor and weren’t caused by Waymo’s vehicles. But in February 2016, a Waymo test car struck a public bus near the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. No one was injured.