Uber Expands Self-Driving Safety Report After NTSB Slams Culture

So far, 23 companies have made their self-driving safety assessments public, according to NHTSA, including Apple Inc., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Lyft Inc., Mercedes-Benz AG, Toyota Motor Corp. and Waymo. Beuse, a former NHTSA associate administrator for vehicle safety research, said Uber is among a handful that have updated its voluntary disclosures.

The fatality occurred around 10 p.m. on March 18, 2018, when a 49-year-old woman was hit by a 2017 Volvo XC90 SUV operated autonomously by Uber, according to police in the Phoenix suburb. Authorities said the vehicle was in self-drive mode with a safety operator behind the wheel when the pedestrian, who was walking a bicycle outside of a crosswalk, was struck. She died at a local hospital.

The NTSB voted in 2019 that the probable cause of the crash was “the failure of the vehicle operator to monitor the environment and the operation of the automated driving system because she was visually distracted throughout her trip by her personal cellphone.”

The board also cited three shortcomings by Uber: the company’s inadequate safety risk assessment procedures; ineffective oversight of vehicle operators; and lack of adequate mechanisms to address complacency by operators as the cars drove themselves.

The Tempe crash roiled the debate about self-driving cars in Washington, where legislation was being considered to drastically increase the number of such cars auto manufacturers would have been able to put on public roads. Uber suspended all testing of self-driving cars for four months before resuming testing in Pittsburgh in July 2018. The company closed its driverless testing program in Arizona and let go almost 300 workers there in May 2018.

Consumer advocates have seized on the incident to urge tougher regulations of self-driving cars.

“It’s nice that Uber has decided this is the right time to update its so-called report, but a consumer-focused agency would have long ago mandated all driverless vehicle manufacturers regularly submit useful safety details regarding their public road tests,” said Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.

NTSB members applauded Uber for cooperating with its nearly two-year-long investigation when it released its findings in late 2019, but also cited an “ineffective safety culture” that played a role in the 2018 crash.