Official: Safety lacking before Uber self-driving car crash

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board says Uber had an ineffective safety culture when one of its autonomous test vehicles ran down and killed a pedestrian last year in Tempe, Arizona.

Robert Sumwalt said at a hearing Tuesday on the March 2018 crash that Uber didn’t continually monitor its operations and it had de-activated its Volvo SUV’s automatic emergency braking system. Uber’s own system also didn’t have the ability to brake automatically, relying on a human backup driver to do the braking.

He says all companies that test autonomous vehicles on public roads need to study the crash to prevent future accidents.

The NTSB will determine the cause of the crash at the Tuesday hearing and make recommendations.