By CRM staff
Toronto, Ontario — December 19, 2018 — Uber has been granted permission by the state of Pennsylvania to resume testing of its autonomous vehicles.
A spokesperson for Uber told TechCrunch that the ride-sharing service received a letter of authorization from the Pennsylvanian Department of Transportation and reiterated that the company has not yet resumed self-driving operations.
Uber’s testing of autonomous vehicles has been on hold since March, following the fatal incident of a woman in Temple, Arizona. An autonomous Uber SUV accompanied by a safety driver was heading northbound when it hit a woman, who later died from her injuries in hospital. The death marked the first ever pedestrian killed from an autonomous vehicle, and immediately put a halt to all of Uber’s autonomous testing activities in Pittsburgh, Toronto, San Francisco and Phoenix.
It was later determined by investigators that the safety driver, Rafaela Vasquez, had looked down at a phone 204 times over the duration of the 43-minute test drive, according to a 318-page police report released from the Temple Police Department.
Going forward Uber will require an employee in each of the front seats of an autonomous vehicle at all times. The company will also make an automatic braking system mandatory.
Uber has been reported to have confidentially filed for an initial public offering two weeks ago.
