The past eighteen months have not been kind to Uber Incorporated. Last year, the company was under media scrutiny following ‘barbaric’ interviews that it conducted. This year, Uber has suffered significant blows following its former CEO Jeff Jones having to apologize to an Uber driver following an altercation that went viral and added to that, the accusations of lack of diversity and poor management that have been leveled against it. This Friday, Uber was hooked in yet another crisis.
Driving Trials Suspended
On Friday the 24th Fresco News released a picture to the public on Twitter. The photo showed two cars on the side of the road. One of the cars was mildly damaged, but the other car, the Uber self-driving Volvo XC90, was rolled over on its side. Questions arose as to what had happened: did the automated Uber vehicle cause the accident?
According to local authorities, the Uber car was not the cause of the crash. Speaking to the USA Today, Tempe Police Department spokeswoman Josie Montenegro stated, “The accident occurred when the driver of the other vehicle failed to yield to the Uber car.” Montenegro went on to confirm that it was not clear whether the Uber car was under the control of its driver during the time of the incident.
Chelsea Kohler, who is the spokesperson for Uber, added, “We can confirm that there was no passenger in the backseat of the vehicle.” Uber’s self-driving cars usually have a driver in them just in case of a malfunction in conditions like severe weather, and Kohler confirmed that the driver of the car at the time did not sustain any injuries. Kohler also authenticated the photo of the accident released on social media.
Furthermore, yesterday Kohler announced that the company would be halting its public tests on the automated models in Tempe, Arizona pending investigation into the accident by the local police. She also reiterated that Uber planned to suspend trial runs in San Francisco and Pittsburgh as well.
The road to putting this nascent technology on the roads has not been an easy one for the automotive giant. It was relatively difficult for Uber to convince regulators to issue them with permits to publicly test their self-driving cars in San Francisco but things took an even worse turn when one of their test drives resulted in a car blowing past a red light at a crossroad. Their permit was revoked, and the company then moved its testing to Arizona where permits are not required for the road tests. With the accident on Friday, the future of the company will not be assured in the automated vehicle industry anytime soon. The company is not the only one that has had accidents in the past; companies like Google, Ford, and General Motors have had their problems with obtaining permits as well.
Even without factoring in the crash, Uber faces a grave threat against its move into the self-driving car industry. Alphabet’s Waymo sued the company and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto for theft of proprietary lidar sensor technologies.
Uber has a long way to go if it wants to be a number one brand in the global market.
