Uber has relaunched its self-driving car program in Pittsburgh, nine months after a driverless car killed someone in Tempe, Ariz.
The ride-sharing firm began on-road testing Thursday after what the company outlined new safeguards it has introduced since the Tempe incident.
“We implemented recommendations from our review processes, spanning technical, operational and organizational improvements. This required a lot of introspection and took some time. Now we are ready to move forward,” Eric Meyhofer, the head of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, wrote in a blog post. “We’ve reviewed and improved our testing program to ensure that our vehicles are considerate and defensive drivers.”
The relaunch comes after Waymo, the self-driving carmaking subsidiary of Google’s parent company, introduced the first self-driving commercial fleet in the Phoenix suburbs earlier this month. General Motors is poised to launch its own autonomous offering next year. Ford and others are preparing to begin testing in Washington, D.C., and other cities.
No federal framework currently exists to oversee the burgeoning technology, though several states have passed laws governing self-driving cars. While the House of Representatives previously passed its own legislation on the issue, a measure in the Senate failed to advance amid objections from several Democrats and trial attorneys.
Uber halted its self-driving program in Arizona after Republican Gov. Doug Ducey suspended the company’s ability to test in the state following a crash in March that killed a 49-year-old woman. At the time of the incident, the driver was watching a TV show on her cell phone and did not look at the road until a half-second before the collision.
Despite the fatality, Toyota in August invested $500 million in Uber’s self-driving program.
[Related: Google-owned Waymo launches self-driving ride-share fleet]
