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Uber’s Autonomous Cars Are Terrible Drivers

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Uber just cannot keep itself out of trouble these days. From allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace to a recent hack of its website host, it seems as if users are getting more reasons to delete the Uber app from their phone. The latest allegation comes from two employees speaking anonymously to The New York Times, and the story isn’t pretty. The testimony from the employees and data sheets from Uber point to the company’s self-driving cars failing to see six red lights in San Francisco and actually running one.

A self-driving Uber running a red light isn’t really new news. When the story surfaced in December of an Uber Volvo failing to stop at a light near the busy Museum of Modern Art, Uber blamed it on the human driver and suspended them. However, new data seems to show that the car was in self-driving mode. Besides the red light problem, autonomous Uber vehicle are also having problems properly navigating their way around bike lanes and the cyclists that use them.

As if that is not bad enough, Uber is currently being sued by Google’s Waymo for stealing their self-driving car tech when Anthony Levandowski left Google and took about nine gigabits of Waymo design documents with him when he headed out to start his own autonomous car company that was later bought by Uber.

Self-driving cars look to be the way of the future, and have the capacity to keep drivers, passengers, and pedestrians safe on our nation’s roadways. However, if companies are lying their way through testing and stealing technology that does not belong to them, we could have to wait a lot longer to have reliable self-driving cars that properly obey traffic laws and recognize all vehicles on the road. It seems as if Uber needs to learn that it’s better to do a job right the first time.

News Source: The New York Times