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Uber suspends autonomous driving project after crash – UPDATE

UPDATE: Uber appears to have rolled its autonomous XC90 back onto its wheels, with Reuters reporting the company's self-driving development project is now back in testing after police gave it the all-clear.


As before, the company is understood to have resumed testing in Tempe, San Francisco and Pittsburgh.


March 27, 2017: Ride-sharing service Uber has suspended its autonomous vehicle program after one of its test vehicles was involved in a crash in Arizona over the weekend.

According to Reuters, there were no serious injuries as a result of the collision, though the self-driving Volvo XC90 was flipped on its side as a result of the collision.

Local authorities said the driver of a second vehicle "failed to yield" to the Uber XC90 while making a turn, "causing the autonomous vehicle to roll onto its side", which means the autonomous SUV wasn't at fault in the incident.

In an email to Reuters following the incident, a spokesperson for the company said that although the XC90 was in autonomous mode, two 'safety' drivers were in the front seats of the Uber vehicle - a standard requirement for its self-driving vehicles.

This latest incident comes after another of Uber's autonomous development vehicles was caught on video running a red light, leading Californian authorities to order the company to stop trialling self-driving vehicles in the state.

It has been just seven months since Uber and Swedish manufacturer Volvo announced their partnership to develop autonomous vehicles, with the deal totalling around US$300 million ($393.65 million) in contributions from both firms.

More recently, Google's Waymo driverless vehicle division filed a lawsuit against Uber, claiming employees of the ride-sharing giant stole designs, patents and other information, including designs of hardware systems like Lidar sensors.

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