Nine months after one of Uber’s self-driving vehicles was involved in a fatal accident with a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, its autonomous cars will finally return to public roads with its development program resuming in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation authorized Uber to begin its program once again, however they will not be picking up passengers and will see only two of its Volvo SUVs run on a one-mile loop at a maximum speed of 25mph, each car featuring two safety drivers, called mission specialists.
Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), released a video following the announcement explaining what the company has been doing since being taken off the road in March, including further testing and internal and external review of its operations, training software and safety practices.
“To find areas where we could improve we added updated courses on distracted and defensive driving and deployed new driver monitoring to help our mission specialists stay focused, and we made sure we have an independent collision avoidance system active every second we’re on the road,” claimed the video.
