The future is now. The future is here. The future is Uber. Despite some of our fears and apprehension, Uber appears to have a strangle hold on the future of driving. As a result, they are pushing the boundaries of transportation in a number of ways. Over the past few years, Uber has entered the bike share space and rumors have swirled about Uber entering into air travel. One area in which Uber has continued to make headlines is in the world of self-driving vehicles. At the beginning of this year, Uber made headlines for rolling out their first batch of self-driving cars. Unfortunately, this effort did not go as well as planned.
In March, an Uber self-driving car in Arizona was responsible for the death of a pedestrian. Understandably, Uber caught hell for the incident. As a result, Uber was forced to pull all of their autonomous vehicles off the road. After a near nine month layoff, it appears that Uber will give their initiative a second try. This month, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation approved Uber’s plan to begin testing out self-driving cars on state roads.
In the wake of this latest development, Uber attempted to ease consumers fears. In a recent statement, Uber’s Head of the Autonomous Vehicle Program, Eric Meyhofer declared, “Over the past nine months, we’ve made safety core to everything we do.” Meyhofer added, “This required a lot of introspection and took some time. Now we are ready to move forward.”
