Uber Puts Its Self-Driving Cars Back On The Road After Crash

Uber's investigation into the incident has cleared its self-driving cars to resume the project in Tempe, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Experts in autonomous vehicles have stated that crashes involving driverless cars are to be expected. However, they add that as the technology evolves so will the safety of everyone on the road. Hod Lipson, a professor of mechanical engineering and roboticist at Columbia University, who estimates there are about 23,000 traffic fatalities per week globally, said: "Driverless cars keep getting better the more they drive, whereas humans have a roughly constant safety record over the years. The idea that somehow a human driver makes the drive more secure is false comfort, and potentially dangerously misleading."

With that being said, Uber's self-driving car programme has faced a substantial amount of controversy. The company moved its cars from San Francisco to Arizona in December after a deadlock with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV rescinded the registration of 16 Uber self-driving cars after the company refused to apply for the necessary permit to test autonomous vehicles on public roads. Uber eventually yielded and applied for and received the permit earlier this month.

Uber is also involved in a lawsuit with Alphabet Inc's, Google's parent company, self-driving car outfit, Waymo. The company has accused Uber of stealing its LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) design - a technology vital to autonomous cars. Uber refutes the claim.