Uber pulls its self-driving cars from the road after Arizona crash left vehicle on its side
Police say crash was caused after other driver ‘failed to yield’ while making a turn in Arizona, USA, but tech firm has removed its fleet from American roads
UBER has taken its fleet of self-driving cars off the roads after an accident left one of the vehicles on its side.
The autonomous Volvo SUV was involved in a collision with another car on Friday in Arizona, USA.
In a statement released today, the company said nobody was seriously injured in the accident which happened in the town of Tempe.
A spokesperson for the car-hailing service said: “We are continuing to look into this incident and can confirm we had no backseat passengers in the vehicle.”
Josie Montenegros, from the Tempe Police Department, said the collision happened after the other vehicle “failed to yield” while making a left turn.
She explained: “The vehicles collided causing the autonomous vehicle to roll onto its side. There were no serious injuries.”
Self-driving Uber vehicles always have a driver who can take over the controls at any time.
Montenegro said it was uncertain whether the Uber driver was controlling the vehicle at the time of the collision.
Uber pulled their autonomous cars off the road in Arizona shortly after the accident and then did the same on Saturday in Pittsburgh and San Francisco – the two other cities where they are operating the self-driving vehicles.
The car-hailing service has been under fire in recent weeks following several senior level resignations and bad news stories.
This included revelations about a culture of sexism operating at the firm, cut-throat workplace tactics and the covert use of software to evade law enforcement.
Supporters of self-driving cars say that the technology can cut down on deadly traffic accidents by eliminating human error.
But there have been accidents, including a fatality in Florida in May, when a truck struck a speeding Tesla that was on autopilot.
An investigation found no safety-related defects with the autopilot system but concluded that the driver may have had time to avert the crash if he had been paying closer attention.
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