{"id":5434,"date":"2018-12-13T19:02:15","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T19:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/uber-told-self-drive-cars-unsafe-days-before-accident\/"},"modified":"2018-12-13T19:02:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T19:02:15","slug":"uber-told-self-drive-cars-unsafe-days-before-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/uber-told-self-drive-cars-unsafe-days-before-accident\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber told self-drive cars unsafe days before accident"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
<\/p>\n

\"UberImage copyright<\/span>
\n EPA<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

A leaked email from an employee warned Uber’s bosses that its self-drive cars were involved in multiple crashes, only days before one killed a pedestrian.<\/p>\n

Robbie Miller, operations manager for Uber’s self-driving trucks, wrote to the firm’s top executives saying the cars were “routinely in accidents”.<\/p>\n

This was partly down to faults with the technology and partly because of the “poor behaviour” of operators, he said.<\/p>\n

Uber has yet to respond to the revelations.<\/p>\n

However, it told news and information website The Information in a statement: “Right now the entire team is focused on safely and responsibly returning to the road in self-driving mode. <\/p>\n

“We have every confidence in the work that the team is doing to get us there. <\/p>\n

“Our team remains committed to implementing key safety improvements, and we intend to resume on-the-road self-driving testing only when these improvements have been implemented and we have received authorisation from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.”<\/p>\n

Mr Miller’s email was sent to the head of Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit, Eric Meyhofer,<\/a> six other executives and lawyers.<\/p>\n

Several of the drivers were not “properly vetted or trained”, he wrote.<\/p>\n

It was sent on 13 March, only days before a fatal collision in Tempe, Arizona in which an autonomous Uber car hit and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg.<\/a><\/p>\n

Uber suspended all its tests following the accident, which is still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.<\/p>\n

In June it was revealed that the safety operator of the car was watching TV just before the accident.<\/p>\n

In his email, Mr Miller wrote: “The cars are routinely in accidents resulting in damage. This is usually the result of poor behaviour of the operator or the AV (autonomous vehicle) technology.<\/p>\n

“A car was damaged nearly every other day in February. We shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Image copyright<\/span>
\n Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n National Transportation Safety Board investigators have examined the vehicle involved in the crash
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He went on to describe three incidents, including one where a car “drove on the sidewalk for several metres”. In another, an accident was avoided only because a vehicle in the adjacent lane swerved to miss the Uber prototype, according to his email.<\/p>\n

Mr Miller complained that such incidents were “ignored”, with the logs left unreviewed by senior managers for days or even weeks.<\/p>\n

“This is not how we should be operating,” he said.<\/p>\n

He recommended that Uber reduce its fleet size by up to 85%, stop tests after all accidents and review any incident, even minor ones “immediately”.<\/p>\n

Mr. Miller is currently working at a self-driving truck start-up led by Anthony Levandowski, who was accused of stealing secrets from Google’s self-driving division Waymo.<\/p>\n

Mr Levandowski was fired by Uber after he declined to testify in the lawsuit filed by Waymo against the firm. The case was settled in February with Uber giving a stake of its company to Waymo and agreeing not to use its technology in its self-driving cars.<\/p>\n

Mr. Miller also worked at Mr Levandowski’s prior company Otto, which was acquired by Uber, and worked for him at Waymo.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n
Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright EPA A leaked email from an employee warned Uber’s bosses that its self-drive cars were involved in multiple crashes, only days before one killed a pedestrian. Robbie Miller, operations manager for Uber’s self-driving trucks, wrote to the firm’s top executives saying the cars were “routinely in accidents”. This was partly down to faults … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}