Photo: YouTube screenshot
Last week, Uber felt a bit cheeky and decided to launch a self-driving service for its customers in San Francisco without applying for a permit with the California DMV.
The state officials said "wait a minute," and requested the ride-hailing company to hold its project until it gets the all-clear from the DMV. Continuing its childish behavior, Uber clung to a bit of semantics in the DMV's definition of what constitutes an autonomous car, saying their vehicles did not fit into that category, despite advertising them as self-driving.
We forgot to mention that the reaction from the Department of Motor Vehicles came after a dashcam footage showed one of Uber's Volvo XC90 SUVs running a red light just as a pedestrian was preparing to cross. This happened just hours after the mobility company had announced the launch of its program.
Yesterday, another piece of information regarding Uber's experiment transpired. It appears the company was well aware its cars had a problem detecting bicycles on bike lanes as they were making right-hand turns, but decided to go ahead as scheduled and come up with a solution on the go.
After failing to convince Uber what it was doing was illegal, the California DMV met today with representatives of the company and the Attorney General's office. The meeting was held behind closed doors, but its outcome was Uber's decision to take its toys and go play somewhere else. And it's not like the company came to this conclusion on its own: the DMV had to revoke the registrations of the self-driving XC90s.
The state officials made it very clear that they will support Uber in acquiring the permits should it decide to apply, but the company acted like a spoiled child and refused to comply with the laws. In its statement, though, it made sure to mention it wasn't leaving California for good.
"We have stopped our self-driving pilot in California as the DMV has revoked the registrations for our self-driving cars. We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules."
That means Uber will now take its fleet of red light- and bicyclist-ignoring SUVs and try to find another city to terrorize. We hear Michigan just passed a law allowing self-driving cars to test on public roads. Uber must have heard that too.
We forgot to mention that the reaction from the Department of Motor Vehicles came after a dashcam footage showed one of Uber's Volvo XC90 SUVs running a red light just as a pedestrian was preparing to cross. This happened just hours after the mobility company had announced the launch of its program.
Yesterday, another piece of information regarding Uber's experiment transpired. It appears the company was well aware its cars had a problem detecting bicycles on bike lanes as they were making right-hand turns, but decided to go ahead as scheduled and come up with a solution on the go.
After failing to convince Uber what it was doing was illegal, the California DMV met today with representatives of the company and the Attorney General's office. The meeting was held behind closed doors, but its outcome was Uber's decision to take its toys and go play somewhere else. And it's not like the company came to this conclusion on its own: the DMV had to revoke the registrations of the self-driving XC90s.
The state officials made it very clear that they will support Uber in acquiring the permits should it decide to apply, but the company acted like a spoiled child and refused to comply with the laws. In its statement, though, it made sure to mention it wasn't leaving California for good.
"We have stopped our self-driving pilot in California as the DMV has revoked the registrations for our self-driving cars. We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules."
That means Uber will now take its fleet of red light- and bicyclist-ignoring SUVs and try to find another city to terrorize. We hear Michigan just passed a law allowing self-driving cars to test on public roads. Uber must have heard that too.
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